GIFT  OF 


I 


AN   INTRODUCTION  TO 
THE  HISTORY  OF  JAPAN 


BY 

KATSURO  KARA 


YAMATO  SOCIETY  PUBLICATION 


G.  P.  Putnam's  Sons 

New   York    and    London 

Hmcfeerfcocfeer 

1920 


b 


COPYRIGHT,  1920,  BY 
THE  YAMATO  SOCIETY 


OBJECTS  OF  THE  YAMATO  SOCIETY 

The  military  achievements  of  Japan  in  the  last 
twenty  years  have  done  much  to  make  the  world 
appreciate  and  acknowledge  the  intrinsic  worth 
of  the  Japanese  nation.  It  is,  however,  very 
doubtful  whether  the  other  nations  find  in  us  many 
other  things  to  admire  besides  our  military  excel- 
lence. Some  of  them,  indeed,  without  fully  in- 
vestigating their  deeper  causes,  have  entertained 
serious  misgivings  as  to  the  probable  consequence 
of  our  military  successes.  The  continual  occur- 
rence of  anti-Japanese  movements  in  the  various 
States  of  America  and  in  the  dependencies  of 
Great  Britain  and  Russia,  countries  with  which 
Japan  is  most  intimately  connected,  has  been 
chiefly  due  to  this  want  of  knowledge  as  to  the 
real  state  of  affairs  in  Japan,  the  progress  in  the 
arts  of  peace,  in  science,  literature,  art,  law  and 
economics. 

Japan  has  a  brilliant  civilisation  of  which  we 
can  justly  be  proud.  In  fine  art,  we  have  painting, 
sculpture,  architecture,  lacquer-work,  metal-carv- 
ing, ceramics,  etc., — all  of  striking  quality;  in  lit- 
erature, our  poetry,  fiction  and  drama  are  worthy 
of  serious  study;  in  music  and  on  the  stage  our 
progress  has  been  along  lines  which  accord  with 

iii 

434892 


iv       Objects  of  the  Yamato  Society 

the  development  of  our  distinctive  national  char- 
acter, and  is  by  no  means  behind  that  of  Europe. 

Europeans  and  Americans,  however,  have 
failed  as  yet  to  appreciate  the  essential  worth  of 
Japan's  civilisation.  Some  foreigners,  it  is  true, 
speak  highly  of  Japanese  fine  art,  praising  Japan 
as  a  country  devoted  to  art;  but  the  works  that 
they  admire  are  not  always  essentially  character- 
istic of  Japan,  nor  are  they  representative  works 
of  Japanese  fine  arts.  The  number  of  foreigners 
aware  of  the  existence  of  an  influential  literature 
in  Japan  is  extremely  limited. 

For  such  regrettable  ignorance,  however,  we 
can  blame  no  one  but  ourselves ;  for  we  have  made 
very  little  effort  to  promote  the  appreciation  of 
our  civilisation  by  other  peoples.  If  Japan,  in 
her  eagerness  to  learn  the  best  of  European  civil- 
isation, continues  to  disregard  the  necessity  of 
making  known  her  own  civilisation  to  peoples 
abroad,  the  world's  misconception  of  Japan  will 
forever  remain  undispelled.  It  is  our  duty,  in- 
deed, to  demonstrate  to  the  world  the  fact  that 
Japanese  literature  and  art  have  foundations  not 
less  deep  than  those  of  our  Bushido. 

On  the  other  hand,  we  must  have  the  broad- 
ness of  mind  to  recognise  and  correct  our  faults, 
so  that  we  may  make  ours  a  civilisation  that  will 
compel  the  admiration  of  the  world.  Whether 
or  not  European  civilisation,  which  we  have  to 
some  extent  adopted,  is  really  good  for  the  whole- 
some development  of  our  nation  is  a  question 


Objects  of  the  Yamato  Society     v 

which  still  awaits  our  mature  consideration.  In 
order  to  enjoy  unrestricted  the  future  possibilities 
of  the  world,  we  must  look  at  things  not  only  from 
a  national,  but  also,  from  a  world-wide  point  of 
view,  abandoning  the  present  Far  Eastern  exclu- 
siveness  and  endeavouring  to  improve  our  position 
in  the  family  of  nations  not  by  military  achieve- 
ments but  by  pacific  means.  This  is,  indeed,  the 
surest  way  to  make  Japan  one  of  the  First  Powers 
both  in  name  and  in  reality. 

To  accomplish  the  above  purpose  is  no  doubt 
a  task  of  no  small  magnitude  and  one  which  will 
require  a  great  deal  of  time  and  labour;  but  as 
our  conviction  is  that  we  should  not  hesitate  be- 
cause of  difficulties,  so  we  have  undertaken  the 
organisation  of  this  Society  to  help  towards  the 
attainment  of  this  ideal. 


RULES  OF  THE  YAMATO  SOCIETY 

ART.  I.  The  Society  has  for  its  object  to  make 
clear  the  meaning  and  extent  of  Japanese  culture 
in  order  to  reveal  the  fundamental  character  of 
the  nation  to  the  world;  and  also  the  introduction 
of  the  best  literature  and  art  of  foreign  countries 
to  Japan  so  that  a  common  understanding  of 
Eastern  and  Western  thought  may  be  promoted. 

ART.  II.  In  order  to  accomplish  the  object 
stated  in  the  foreging  Article  the  Society  shall 
carry  on  the  following  enterprises: 

1.  Publication  in  foreign  languages  of  works 
relating  to  various  branches  of  Japanese  history. 

2.  Translation  of  Japanese  literary  works. 

3.  Publication  in  foreign  languages  of  works 
of  Japanese  literature  and  art. 

4.  Publication  in  foreign  languages  of  a  peri- 
odical relating  to  Japanese  literature  and  art. 

5.  Such  steps  as  may  be  necessary  for  the  in- 
troduction into  Japan  of  the  best  literature  and 
art  of  foreign  countries. 

6.  Exchange  exhibitions  of  foreign  and  Japan- 
ese art  objects  to  be  arranged  between  Japan  and 
other  countries. 

7.  Investigation    and    application    of    means 
necessary  for  the  maintenance  and  improvement 
of  Japanese  art. 

vii 


viii  Rules  of  the  Yamato  Society 

8.  Despatch  to  foreign  countries  of  qualified 
persons  for  the  study  and  investigation  of  import- 
ant matters  relating  to  or  arising  out  of  the  pur- 
poses of  the  Society. 

9.  Investigation    and    application    of    means 
necessary  for  the  improvement  of  the  customs  and 
ideals  of  the  Japanese  people  in  general. 

ART.  III.  A  Standing  Committee  shall  be 
elected  by  the  members. 

ART.  IV.  The  Standing  Committee  shall  have 
power  to  appoint  or  dismiss  a  Secretary  and 
clerks. 

ART.  V.  Candidates  for  membership  of  the 
Society  shall  be  recommended  by  the  Society. 

ART.  VI.  The  expenses  of  the  Society  shall  be 
defrayed  out  of  the  revenue  derived  from  the  con- 
tributions of  members  and  of  persons  interested 
in  the  work  of  the  Society,  from  the  sale  of  publi- 
cations and  from  other  miscellaneous  sources. 

ART.  VII.  Meetings  of  the  Society  shall  be 
held  as  occasion  may  require. 

ART.  VIII.  The  Standing  Committee  of  the 
Society  shall  submit  to  the  members  once  a  year 
an  annual  report  of  the  revenue  and  expenditures, 
accomplishments,  and  condition  of  the  Society. 

Members  of  the  Yamato  Society: 

TAKUMA  DAN, 

BARON  TORANOSUKE  FURUKAWA, 
SHIGENOBU    HIRAYAMA,    Member    of    the 
House  of  Peers. 


Rules  of  the  Yamato  Society      ix 

SHIGEZO  IMAMURA, 

JUNNOSUKE  INOUYE, 

YEIKICHI  KAMADA, 

BARON  HISAYA  IWASAKI,  }  Partners  of  the 

BARON  KOVATA 


CHOZO  KOIKE,   Director  of  Mr.   Kuhara's 

Head  Office,  Tokyo. 
FUSANOSUKE    KUHARA,    President    of    the 

Kuhara  Mining  Co.,  Tokyo. 
BARON  NOBUAKI  MAKING,  Member  of  the 

House  of  Peers. 
SHIGEMICHI  MIYOSHI,  Member  of  the  Mi- 

tsubishi Goshi  Kaisha,  Tokyo. 
BARON  KUMAKICHI  NAKASHIMA, 
SAIZABURO  NISHIWAKI, 
JOKICHI  TAKAMINE,  President  of  the  Taka- 

mine  Laboratory,  New  York. 
SANAE  TAKATA,  Member  of  the  House  of 

Peers. 
SEIICHI  TAKI,  Professor  of  Art  History,  Im- 

perial University,  Tokyo. 
MARQUIS  YORIMICHI  TOKUGAWA,  Member 

of  the  House  of  Peers. 
Yuzo  TSUBOUCHI,  former  Professor  of  the 

Waseda  University,  Tokyo. 
KAZUTOSHI  UYEDA,  Dean  of  Literary  Col- 

lege, Imperial  University,  Tokyo. 
BARON  KENJIRO  YAMAKAWA,  President  of 

Imperial  University,  Tokyo. 


x      Rules  of  the  Yamato  Society 

Members  of  the  Standing  Committee: 

SHIGENOBU  HIRAYAMA. 
CHOZO  KOIKE. 
SHIGEMICHI  MIYOSHI. 
SANAE  TAKATA. 
SEIICHI  TAKI. 
KAZUTOSHI  UYEDA. 


PREFACE 

The  principal  aim  of  this  work,  written  at  the 
request  of  the  Yamato  Society  as  the  first  of  its 
projected  series  of  publications,  is  to  furnish  a 
synopsis,  or  perhaps  rather  to  give  a  general 
sketch,  of  the  history  of  Japan.  The  public  to 
which  it  is  tendered  is  not  those  professional  his- 
torians and  students  of  history  now  abounding  in 
our  country,  who  are  already  perplexedly  encum- 
bered with,  and  engrossed  by,  a  superfluity  of 
overdetailed  materials  and  a  plethora  of  contra- 
dictory conjectures  and  hypotheses.  In  short,  the 
book  is,  strictly  speaking,  intended  for  those  Euro- 
peans and  Americans  who  would  like  to  dip  into 
the  past,  as  well  as  peer  into  the  future,  of  Japan, 
— Japan,  not  as  a  land  of  quaint  curios  and 
picturesque  paradoxes  only  worthy  to  be  pre- 
served intact  for  a  show,  but  as  a  land  inhabited 
by  a  nation  striving  hard  to  improve  itself,  and 
to  take  a  share,  however  humble,  in  the  common 
progress  of  the  civilisation  of  the  world. 

Having  such  an  aim  on  the  one  hand,  it  becomes 
on  the  other  a  matter  of  urgent  necessity  for 
the  author  to  exercise  great  caution  against  ex- 
tolling bombastically  our  national  merits  or  fall- 
ing into  a  coarse  and  futile  jingoism.  To  be 

xi 


Xll 


Preface 


ostentatious  proves,  after  all,  some  lack  of  sin- 
cerity and  impartiality,  and  is  the  very  vice  which 
should  be  avoided  by  historians  worthy  of  the 
name.  In  order  to  guard  against  such  a  blunder, 
however,  and  attain  as  far  as  possible  the  aim  I 
have  set  before  me,  I  thought  it  wisest  to  approxi- 
mate the  standpoint  from  which  the  book  was  to 
be  written  as  nearly  as  possible  to  that  of  a  for- 
eigner, free  from  our  national  prejudices  and  at 
the  same  time  intensely  sympathetic  with  our 
country.  Of  course,  it  can  hardly  be  disputed  that 
to  place  oneself  unerringly  on  the  standpoint  of 
another,  different  widely  in  thought  as  well  as 
in  nationality,  is  an  affair  very  easy  to  talk  of, 
but  exceedingly  difficult  to  put  into  practice.  I 
dare  not  presume  that  I  have  been  at  all  equal  to 
the  task.  Still  it  may  be  of  some  use  for  the 
reader  to  learn  beforehand  whither  my  earnest  ef- 
forts are  directed. 

There  is  some  truth  in  the  saying  that  the  time 
is  not  yet  ripe  for  a  conscientious  Japanese  scholar 
to  write  a  history  of  our  country  covering  all  ages, 
ancient  and  modern,  especially  if  that  history  is 
to  be  canvassed  in  a  small  volume  of  some  three 
or  four  hundred  pages.  The  reason  generally  al- 
leged is  that  too  many  Important  questions  in  the 
history  of  Japan  remain  yet  undecided.  It  is  to 
be  doubted,  however,  whether  there  can  be  found 
any  country  in  the  whole  world  whose  historical 
problems  are  all  definitely  solved.  Therefore  it 
would  be  folly  to  wait  till  the  Yellow  River  be- 


Preface  .    xiii 

comes  pellucid,  as  a  Chinese  proverb  has  it.  Since 
the  opening  of  our  country,  we  have  had  many 
foreign  scholars  investigating  ourselves,  our  ori- 
gins and  our  history,  which  in  most  cases  have 
been  misunderstood  and  misrepresented.  By  some 
we  are  overestimated,  flattered,  caressed,  and  ca- 
joled. By  others  we  are  undervalued,  despised, 
and  condemned.  We  are  sometimes  elevated  to 
a  rank  so  high  that  no  earthly  nation  could  ever 
deserve  it,  and  sometimes  we  are  mercilessly  rele- 
gated to  a  stage  of  savagery,  to  get  back  to  which 
we  should  have  to  forego  our  cherished  long  his- 
tory, the  beginnings  of  which  are  lost  in  the  myths 
of  ages.  Such  an  astonishing  oscillation  of  opin- 
ion as  regards  the  estimation  of  the  merits  and 
demerits  of  the  Japanese  nation  and  its  history  is 
more  than  to  be  endured.  Surely  the  cause  of 
being  undervalued  at  one  time  lies  in  being  over- 
estimated at  another,  and  vice  versa.  We  must 
put  an  end  to  this  oscillation  and  must  be  fairly 
represented,  and  in  order  to  avoid  misrepresenta- 
tion we  must  portray  ourselves  as  fairly  as  we 
can.  We  ought  not  to  wait  for  the  appearance 
of  foreign  authors,  capable,  unprejudiced,  and 
deeply  interested  in  our  country. 

It  seems  that  there  are  not  a  few  foreign  pub- 
licists who  suppose  that  Japan  is  not  yet  suf- 
ficiently advanced  in  her  civilisation  to  require 
long  years  of  study  to  understand  her.  This 
is  why  there  is  such  a  number  of  tourist-writers, 
skip  over  the  whole  country  in  a  few  weeks, 


xiv  Preface 

and  are  presuming  enough  to  make  sweeping  as- 
sertions about  all  sorts  and  conditions  of  things 
Japanese  with  which  they  come  into  touch  at 
haphazard.  Again,  there  is  another  class  of 
writers,  who  would  like  to  rate  the  Japanese  na- 
tion and  its  history  much  higher  than  the  above- 
mentioned  do,  and  who  know  that  it  is  not  such  a 
very  easy  matter  to  understand  them.  Unluckily, 
however,  they  are  generally  of  the  opinion  that 
it  is  only  they,  and  not  the  Japanese,  who  are  com- 
petent to  take  up  the  task  of  interpretation,  if 
those  things  are  to  be  understood  at  all.  Stand- 
ing upon  this  point  of  view,  they  would  gladly  ac- 
cept any  kind  of  materials  furnished  by  the  Jap- 
anese, but  flatly  refuse  to  listen  to  any  theories  or 
arguments  devised  by  Japanese  scholars,  and  sys- 
tematically repudiate  almost  all  conclusions  ar- 
rived at  by  the  latter.  Writers  of  such  a  type 
think  that  the  intellectual  capacity  of  the  Japanese 
as  a  nation  is  not  yet  so  high  as  to  be  able  to  elab- 
orate logical  argumentations.  These  two  sets  of 
foreign  writers  mentioned  above  sometimes  praise 
us  sans  phrase,  it  is  true.  They  are  not,  however, 
with  their  eulogistic  and  gracious  verdict,  the  sort 
of  champions  to  dispel  the  misrepresentations  and 
misunderstandings  under  which  we  suffer. 

Moreover,  for  Japanese  historians,  the  need 
has  never  been  more  urgent  than  now  to  make 
a  trial  in  writing  a  history  of  their  own  country 
for  the  sake  of  foreign  readers.  On  account  of 
the  Great  War,  the  so-called  European  Concert, 


Preface  xv 

that  is  to  say,  the  Areopagus  of  a  few  nations,  will 
be  superseded  by  the  Concert  of  the  World.  The 
post-bellum  readjustment  and  reconstruction,  na- 
tional as  well  as  international,  of  countries  bellig- 
erent and  neutral  will  be  an  overwhelming  task 
such  as  the  nations  of  the  world  have  never  be- 
fore undertaken.  Perhaps  there  will  follow  a 
long  period  of  peace,  but  the  feeling  of  nations 
toward  one  another  will  in  all  natural  probability 
continue  sensitive  and  acute,  and  will  not  easily 
subside.  And  in  such  a  nervous  and  critical  age 
as  that,  Japan's  position  will  be  an  exceedingly 
difficult  one.  Hitherto  every  move  she  has  made, 
every  feat  she  has  achieved,  has  been  made  an 
object  of  international  suspicion,  especially  in  re- 
cent times.  Japan,  however,  cannot  help  making 
progress  in  the  future,  whether  welcomed  by  other 
nations  or  not,  for  where  there  is  no  progress, 
there  is  stagnation.  Hence  arises  the  imperative 
necessity,  at  the  juncture,  of  an  attempt  by  the 
Japanese  to  explain  themselves  through  telling 
their  own  history,  and  by  so  doing  procure  thor- 
ough understanding  of  themselves,  their  character 
and  characteristics,  not  only  as  they  now  really 
are,  but  as  they  used  to  be  in  the  past.  That  is 
the  one  object  which  I  have  pursued  in  this  vol- 
ume. 

In  preparing  this  work  I  acknowledge  that  I 
am  greatly  indebted  to  my  colleagues  in  our  Uni- 
versity of  Kyoto.  Warmest  thanks  are  due  to 
Professor  A.  H.  Sayce  of  Oxford,  who,  during 


xvi  Preface 

his  sojourn  in  our  ancient  metropolis,  kindly  re- 
vised that  part  of  my  manuscript  dealing  with  the 
early  history  of  Japan.  It  is  also  my  greatest 
pleasure  to  acknowledge  my  gratitude  to  Mr. 
Edward  Clarke,  B.A.  (Cantab.),  Professor  of 
English  Language  and  Literature  in  this  College, 
who  went  to  a  great  deal  of  trouble  in  revising  my 
awkward  English  through  the  whole  volume. 

KATSURO  HARA 

College  of  Literature, 

Kyoto  Imperial  University, 
October,  1918. 


CONTENTS 

CHAPTER  PAGE 

I.    INTRODUCTION i 

II.     THE  RACES  AND  CLIMATE  OF  JAPAN    .        21 

III.  JAPAN   BEFORE   THE    INTRODUCTION   OF 

BUDDHISM  AND  CHINESE  CIVILISATION       50 

IV.  GROWTH    OF    THE     IMPERIAL      POWER 

GRADUAL  CENTRALISATION  73 

V.     REMODELING  OF  THE   STATE       .     .     .     104 

VI.  CULMINATION  OF  THE  NEW  REGIME; 
STAGNATION;  RISE  OF  THE  MILITARY 
REGIME 128 

VII.  THE  MILITARY  REGIME;  THE  TAIRA  AND 
THE  MINAMOTO.  THE  SHOGUNATE  OF 
KAMAKURA 156 

VIII.  THE  WELDING  OF  THE  NATION.  THE 
POLITICAL  DISINTEGRATION  OF  THE 
COUNTRY 194 

IX.     END  OF  MEDIEVAL  JAPAN      ....     221 

X.     THE    TRANSITION   FROM    MEDIEVAL   TO 

MODERN  JAPAN 252 

XL  THE  TOKUGAWA  SHOGUNATE, — ITS  PO- 
LITICAL REGIME  282 


xviii  Contents 

CHAPTER  PAGE 

XII.     TOKUGAWA  SHOGUNATE, — CULTURE  AND 

SOCIETY 315 

XIII.  THE  RESTORATION  OF  THE  MEIDJI        .  355 

XIV.  EPILOGUE 382 

INDEX ...  399 


AN   INTRODUCTION   TO 
THE  HISTORY  OF  JAPAN 


AN   INTRODUCTION  TO   THE 
HISTORY  OF  JAPAN 

CHAPTER  I 

INTRODUCTION 

THE  history  of  Japan  may  be  useful  to  foreign- 
ers in  several  different  ways.  If  we  do  not  take 
into  account  the  serviceableness  of  detached  his- 
torical data  or  groups  of  data,  that  is  to  say, 
when  we  exclude  those  cases  where  the  historical 
data  of  Japan  are  studied  not  for  the  sake  of 
understanding  Japan  herself,  but  in  behalf  of  some 
other  scientific  purposes,  then  it  can  be  said  that 
Japanese  history  will  serve  foreigners  in  two  prin- 
cipal and  distinct  ways.  Firstly,  it  will  interest 
them  as  the  history  of  one  special  nation  among 
many  in  the  world.  Secondly,  it  may  be  useful 
to  historical  study  in  general,  seeing  that  it  can 
be  regarded  as  constituting  in  itself  a  microcosm 
of  miniature  of  the  history  of  the  world  mani- 
fested in  that  of  a  small  nation.  The  former 
point  is  that  which  attracts  most  foreigners  by 
the  strength  of  novelty,  while  the  latter  will  be 
none  the  "less  suggestive  to  comprehensive  and 


2  History  of  Japan 

reflective  historians.     Both  points  need  some  ex- 
planations.    Let  me  begin  with  the  first. 

Japan  is  a  country  inhabited  by  a  people  dif- 
fering remarkably  in  raciaf  features  from  those1 
who  now  occupy  the  greater  part  of  Europe.  She 
remained  for  a  long  time  shut  up  against  the  for- 
eigners knocking  at  her  gate,  and  on  that  account 
her  history,  compared  with  that  of  other  nations, 
presents  striking  and  unique  characteristics.  Many 
ancient  manners  and  customs,  some  of  them 
having  their  origins  in  ages  prehistoric  and  unin- 
telligible even  to  the  present  Japanese  themselves, 
are  handed  down  almost  unchanged  to  this  day. 
On  the  other  hand,  the  history  of  Japan  is  not  so 
simple  as  the  histories  of  many  semi-civilised  coun- 
tries, which  are  generally  nothing  but  incredible 
legends  and  records  of  chronic  disturbances  aris- 
ing out  of  some  inevitable  natural  causes.  Full 
of  charming  oddities,  which  might  provide  sources 
of  wild  speculations,  and  at  the  same  time  not 
lacking  a  certain  complexity, — a  complexity  indis- 
pensable if  it  is  to  become  an  object  of  interest 
and  investigation  to  any  scientific  historian,  the 
history  of  Japan  should  prove  a  very  fascinating 
study.  In  this  it  resembles  the  relation  many 
rare  indigenous  flora  and  fauna  bear  to  foreign 
biologists.  It  should  be  noticed,  however,  that 
biologists  may  safely  remain  constant  as  regards 
their  points  of  view,  whatever  plant  or  animal 
they  happen  to  study,  while  historians  ought  al- 
ways to  bear  in  mind  that  every  nation  and  every 


Introduction  3 

age  has  its  own  criterion.  In  the  study  of  Jap- 
anese history  the  same  truth  must  hold  good.  It 
is  a  very  regrettable  fact,  however,  that  many 
foreign  Japanologists  are  too  fond  of  neglecting 
the  Japanese  point  of  view,  and  would  like  to  ap- 
ply the  western  standard  to  the  things  Japanese 
they  encounter  in  their  researches  concerning  our 
country.  Frequently  they  are  rash  enough  to 
criticise  before  they  have  a  proper  understanding 
of  those  things  which  it  is  their  business  to  criti- 
cise. Sometimes  they  get  at  a  truth  to  which  Jap- 
anese scholars  have  never  attained,  but  they  al- 
most as  a  rule  forget  that  things  Japanese  too 
should  be  considered  from  many  sides,  as  occi- 
dental things  should  necessarily  be,  and  inflexibly 
adhere  to  that  one  line  of  insight  which  they  were 
once  fortunate  enough  to  seize.  Or  sometimes 
they  attack  pitilessly  those  legendary  parts  of  our 
history,  which  are  to  be  found  in  some  school 
text-books  or  are  not  yet  entirely  expunged  from 
some  more  scholarly  works,  on  account  of  a  na- 
tional reluctance  to  part  with  those  cherished  mem- 
ories of  our  forefathers.  They  blame  us  as  if 
no  country  in  the  world  were  chauvinistic  except 
Japan,  and  Japan  only.  Such  treatment  of  Jap- 
anese history,  however,  will  avail  them  nothing  at 
all,  not  to  mention  that  we  suffer  very  much  in 
our  outward  relations  from  it.  As  chapter  II. 
and  the  following,  however,  are  chiefly  devoted  to 
the  purpose  of  showing  that  the  history  of  Japan 
may  be  interpreted  side  by  side  with  that  of  many 


4  History  of  Japan 

European  nations,  I  will  cease  dwelling  further  on 
this  topic,  and  will  directly  go  over  to  the  second 
point. 

To  consider  Japanese  history  as  a  miniature  of 
the  world's  history  is  rather  a  new  assertion,  so 
that  it  requires  conclusive  justification.  It  is  now 
generally  believed  or  assumed  that  every  nation 
continues  to  evolve  as  an  individual  does,  till  it 
reaches  its  climax  of  growth  and  begins  to  decay. 
Hence  many  modern  historians  have  successively 
tried  to  extract  certain  principles  by  the  process 
of  induction  from  kindred  historical  events  which 
took  place  in  different  countries  and  ages,  and 
thus  to  raise  the  study  of  history  to  the  rank  of  a 
science  in  the  same  sense  as  that  in  which  the 
word  is  used  when  we  speak  of  natural  phe- 
nomena. It  is  a  great  pity,  however,  that  every 
historical  event  is  of  a  very  ephemeral  nature, 
never  to  be  repeated  in  exactly  the  same  form  in 
which  it  once  occurred.  And  if  it  passes  away, 
it  passes  away  forever,  not  to  be  retarded  in  the 
midst  of  its  course  by  the  will  of  an  investigator. 
Often  one  can  contribute  with  full  consciousness 
to  the  happening  of  an  event,  or  can  alter  the 
course  of  it,  but  one  cannot  undo  by  any  means 
the  event  itself  and  wash  the  ground  as  if  nothing 
had  taken  place.  Moreover,  historical  facts  are 
very  difficult  to  detach  from  their  environment 
entirely,  however  isolated  they  seem  to  be,  and 
on  that  account  they  are  not  fit  to  be  made  objects 
of  laboratory  experiments.  In  a  school  class- 


Introduction  5 

room  the  pupils  are  taught  to  solve  an  algebraic 
equation  of  a  binomial  expression  by  supposing 
the  value  of  x  and  y  alternately  to  be  equal  to 
zero.  How  much  the  task  of  historians  would  be 
lightened,  if  we  could  for  some  time  trace  the 
effect  of  a  certain  cause  exclusively,  setting  at 
naught  other  concurrent  causes,  as  if  those  causes 
might  be  supposed  to  be  standing  still  for  a  mo- 
ment of  observation  or  hypothetically  cancelled 
for  a  necessary  time ! 

Strictly  speaking,  the  above  device  is  out  of 
the  question  in  the  case  of  any  historical  investi- 
gation. Setting  that  aside,  there  is  still  another 
greater  difficulty  to  encounter  in  the  study  of  his- 
tory. Every  school-boy  knows  that  there  is  a  fun- 
damental law  in  physics,  that  when  a  body  is  set 
in  motion  by  a  certain  impetus,  it  will  move  on 
continuously  in  one  direction  with  the  same  mo- 
mentum, so  long  as  it  is  left  uninfluenced  by  any 
other  new  force.  It  is  true,  however,  that  such 
a  case  exists  very  rarely  even  in  natural  phenom- 
ena, and  it  would  be  quite  absurd  to  look  for  the 
like  in  the  domain  of  history.  More  than  one 
cause  acts  conjointly  upon  individuals,  families, 
tribes,  or  nations,  and  before  those  causes  cease 
to  influence,  other  new  causes  generally  come  into 
play,  so  that  the  influences  of  the  latter  are  inter- 
woven with  those  of  the  former  causes  or  groups 
of  causes,  and  make  discrimination  between  them 
exceedingly  difficult. 

Summing  up   the   above,   one   cannot   entirely 


6  History  of  Japan 

isolate  a  country  from  its  surroundings,  in  order 
to  see  what  a  country  or  a  nation  would  be  able 
to  achieve,  if  untouched  by  any  outward  influence, 
that  is  to  say,  solely  out  of  its  own  immanent 
evolving  forces.  Next,  it  is  none  the  less  difficult 
to  observe  scientifically  the  effects  of  some  out- 
ward forces  acting  on  a  nation,  by  warding  off 
the  influx  of  subsequent  influences  and  thus  giving 
to  the  forces  in  question  the  full  scope  and  time 
to  exert  their  influence.  It  often  happens,  how- 
ever, that  what  cannot  be  done  artificially  may  be 
found  produced  spontaneously,  and  though  we 
cannot  make  experiments,  in  the  strict  sense  of 
the  word,  while  observing  historical  data,  it  is 
possible  that  the  history  of  a  nation  or  of  an  age 
may  be  taken  as  a  case  or  a  phase  of  an  experi- 
ment, if  such  an  experiment  could  ever  be  tried 
at  all.  And  indeed  the  history  of  Japan  may  be 
considered  as  one  of  a  few  such  happy  cases. 

Here  I  need  not  talk  much  about  the  history 
of  our  country  anterior  to  the  introduction  of  the 
Chinese  civilisation.  After  the  opening  of  the 
regular  intercourse  between  this  country  and 
China  in  the  beginning  of  the  seventh  century, 
institutions,  arts,  learning,  and  even  the  manners 
of  every  day  life  continued  for  a  long  time  to  be 
brought  thence  by  many  official  emissaries  and 
students,  and  copied  faithfully  here,  though  gen- 
erally with  slight  modifications.  At  that  time, 
however,  there  being  no  country  far  advanced  in 
civilisation  other  than  China  near  us,  the  Chinese 


Introduction  7 

influence,  the  only  exotic  one,  was  allowed  to  take 
sole  and  full  effect.  Besides  this,  that  Chinese 
civilisation  itself  was  not  encouraged  to  flow  in 
endlessly.  When,  with  the  decay  of  the  T'ang 
dynasty  and  the  setting  in  of  the  anarchical  con- 
dition following  it  in  China,  the  highly  finished 
culture  attained  during  that  dynasty,  perhaps  the 
most  perfect  one  China  had  ever  seen,  began  to 
degenerate  there,  the  official  intercourse  between 
that  country  and  Japan  was  interrupted.  Of 
course,  I  do  not  mean  to  say  that  even  private 
and  intermittent  commercial  intercourse  was  also 
suspended  at  the  same  time,  for  the  geographical 
position  of  our  country  toward  China  does  not 
allow  the  former  to  remain  entirely  isolated  from 
the  latter.  The  suspension  of  the  regular  inter- 
course itself,  however,  was  enough  to  save  Japan 
from  becoming  entangled  in  the  vicissitudes  of  the 
various  dynasties  following  the  T'ang,  and  our 
forefathers  were  left  to  themselves  to  make  the 
best  use  of,  that  is  to  say,  to  digest,  what  had  al- 
ready been  brought  in  abundantly.  In  the  succeed- 
ing period  the  quiet  process  of  rumination  went 
on  for  several  centuries.  If  we  look  back  into  the 
Japanese  history  of  that  time,  therefore,  we  can 
ascertain  fairly  scientifically  the  effect  of  a  high 
civilisation  acting  on  a  naive  population  not  yet 
sufficiently  organised  as  a  nation,  as  our  country 
was  at  that  period,  and  likewise  we  can  observe 
many  traits  of  the  old  T'ang  culture,  which  is  now 


8  History  of  Japan 

difficult  to  trace  in  China  herself.     This  is  our 
first  experiment  in  Chinese  civilisation. 

Among  the  dynasties  that  followed  the  fall  of 
the  T'ang,  that  which  longest  held  the  rule  was  the 
Sung,  and  between  China  under  the  latter  dynasty 
and  Japan  merchant  ships  plied  now  and  then. 
Some  Japanese  Buddhist  priests  followed  the 
track  of  their  predecessors,  and  went  over  to 
China  to  study  Buddhism.  At  the  time  of  the 
Yuen  dynasty  founded  by  the  Mongols,  China 
sent  many  Buddhist  missionaries  successively  to 
Japan,  where  religious  innovations  were  in  course 
of  progress.  This  is  our  second  experiment  in 
Chinese  civilisation.  In  the  first  experiment  the 
religious  element  was,  of  course  not  excluded. 
The  essential  characteristic,  however,  of  the  cul- 
ture of  the  T'ang  dynasty  was  politico-aesthetical, 
and  as  the  result  of  the  introduction  of  that  cul- 
ture, Japan  became  enlightened  in  general.  In 
other  words,  the  first  experiment  may  be  said  to 
have  been  an  aesthetical  one,  while  the  second  is 
one  apt  to  be  termed  a  religious  one,  and  by  the 
blending  of  the  results  of  the  two  experiments,  we 
became  a  tolerably  aesthetic  and  religious  people. 
Still  there  remained  much  to  be  wished  for  in 
respect  of  national  unification  and  social  solidarity, 
and  it  is  the  culture  of  the  Sung  dynasty  itself 
which  provided  that  very  need,  being  politico-eth- 
ical in  its  essential  nature.  By  the  introduction  of 
that  culture  the  doctrines  of  the  Confucian  philos- 
ophers, which  were  made  the  means  of  regulating 


Introduction  9 

the  social  and  political  organisation  of  Japan,  were 
inculcated  widely  and  deeply,  and  forced  into 
practice  more  rigorously  than  they  were  in  China 
herself.  This  is  our  third  experiment  in  Chinese 
civilisation.  And  when  this  experiment  was  al- 
most finished,  we  were  ^aced  by  the  inundation  of 
western  civilisation,  which  at  last  made  it  impos- 
sible for  us  to  continue  the  process  of  rumination, 
and  compelled  us  to  plunge  headlong  into  the 
maelstrom  of  world  history. 

It  is  rather  derogatory  to  our  national  pride 
to  have  to  aver  that  we  are  so  deeply  indebted  to 
Chinese  civilisation.  Yet  the  facts  cannot  be  de- 
nied, nor  the  truth  falsified.  Moreover,  we  need 
not  be  ashamed  that  we  brought  in  so  much  from 
China,  while  we  gave  very  little  to  the  Chinese 
in  exchange.  How  could  we,  who  were  very  late 
in  commencing  a  civilised  national  life,  initiate  a 
new  civilisation  independent  of  that  of  China, 
without  imitating  it?  Was  not  the  Chinese  civil- 
isation too  far  advanced  and  too  overpowering 
for  the  Japanese  of  that  time,  the  Japanese  who 
were  still  at  the  outset  of  thqir  evolutionary 
march?  On  the  contrary,  justice  should  be  done 
to  the  fact,  that  we  not  only  improved  ourselves 
by  availing  ourselves  of  such  a  high  civilisation, 
but  withstood  it  at  the  same  time,  being  far  from 
dwindling  away  as  a  result  of  having  come  into 
contact  with  it,  as  many  uncivilised  races  have 
done  in  a  similar  case.  No  impartial  historian 
would  fail  to  observe  that  there  is  some  capacity 


io  History  of  Japan 

not  borrowed  but  inborn  in  the  Japanese  people, 
by  force  of  which  they  were  able  to  consolidate 
themselves  as  a  compact  nation,  possessing  strik- 
ing characteristics  quite  different  from  those  of 
China.  And  it  is  especially  to  be  noted  to  the 
honour  of  the  Japanese,  that  the  more  we  helped 
ourselves  to  Chinese  culture,  the  wider  became 
the  divergence  between  the  two  countries.  Could 
such  a  way  of  introducing  an  alien  civilisation  be 
designated  a  servile  imitation?  I  am  far  from 
trying  to  embellish  every  phase  of  the  history  of 
Japan,  whatever  its  due  merit  may  be,  and  would 
be  content  if  even  a  few  of  the  wanton  calumnies 
current  vis  a  vis  Japan  be  set  aright  by  making 
her  real  history  understood,  which  is  not  very 
easy  to  grasp,  but  yet  not  so  sterile  as  it  is  reputed 
to  be  by  some  foreign  historians. 

What  I  want  to  call  attention  to  next  is  that 
the  history  of  our  country  is  not  that  monotonous 
repetition  of  a  certain  kind  of  historical  data,  how- 
ever peculiar  the  data  in  themselves  may  be.  Nay, 
the  history  of  Japan  is  full  of  varieties  in  the  na- 
ture of  its  data.  The  history  of  Greece  is  some- 
times stated  to  be  a  miniature  of  the  world's  his- 
tory on  account  of  the  richness  in  variety  of  the 
historical  phenomena  which  occurred  there,  it  be- 
ing possible  to  find  there  also  most  of  the  impor- 
tant subjects  treated  in  history  at  large,  though 
of  course  on  a  much  reduced  scale.  In  this  re- 
gard, too,  the  history  of  Japan  closely  resembles 
that  of  ancient  Greece,  Our  country  had  been 


Introduction  II 

disunited  for  a  long  time,  each  section  constituting 
itself  a  political  quasi-unit  governed  by  a  certain 
local  semi-independent  lord,  like  the  tyrant  of 
Greek  history.  Those  local  potentates,  however, 
were  not  so  arrogant  as  not  to  recognise  the  hered- 
itary, political  and  spiritual  sovereignty  of  the 
Emperor.  Not  only  that.  They  also  reluctantly 
rejected  the  hegemony  of  the  Shogunate,  though 
as  a  matter  of  fact  this  had  but  a  nominal  exist- 
ence. From  this  point  of  view,  it  might  be  as- 
serted that  our  country  never  ceased  to  be  a  united 
one.  The  bond  of  unity,  however,  became  very 
slack  at  intervals,  so  that  the  very  existence  of 
the  unity  itself  was  often  in  doubt.  In  our  his- 
tory, therefore,  there  were  many  obstacles  to  pro- 
gress, especially  in  those  lines  of  progress  which 
necessarily  depend  on  the  close  unification  of  the 
whole  country.  At  the  same  time,  however,  ad- 
vantages are  not  to  be  neglected,  which  might  be 
considered  to  result  from  the  dismemberment  it- 
self. Japan  had  many  small  centres  at  some  pe- 
riods. But  it  was,  to  some  extent,  owing  to  sim- 
ilar circumstances  that  those  centres  came  into 
existence,  and  for  that  reason  there  was  to  be 
found  much  in  common  in  all  of  them,  in  respect 
of  the  tone  of  the  culture  fostered  in  the  respect- 
ive centres.  That  is  a  matter  of  course.  Among 
those  centres,  however,  there  arose  naturally 
much  vying  with  one  another  in  the  promotion  of 
their  progress,  and  thus  the  general  standard  of 
civilisation  in  Japan  came  to  be  raised  to  a  not 


12  History  of  Japan 

inconsiderable  height.  Moreover,  something 
like  international  relations  began  to  grow  up  be- 
tween those  units,  which  contributed  largely  to  the 
perfection  of  the  culture  within  each  of  them. 
This  is  the  same  interesting  phenomenon,  which 
we  can  trace  not  in  the  history  of  Greece  only, 
but  in  that  of  the  Holy  Roman  Empire,  nay,  even 
in  the  history  of  Europe  itself.  The  difference  is 
simply  that  in  Europe  the  same  phenomenon  de- 
veloped on  a  grand  scale,  while  it  took  place  in 
Japan  in  a  very  small  compass.  No  wonder  that 
as  a  result  of  having  had  a  national  experience 
of  the  nature  stated  above,  the  history  of  Japan 
is  rich  in  varieties  of  data  and  deserves  the  at- 
tention of  highly  qualified  historians.  So  let  me 
here  submit  to  a  hasty  examination  a  few  of  the 
important  items  in  Japanese  history,  which  even 
to  European  readers,  may  be  of  no  small  inter- 
est, having  their  parallels  in  the  histories  of  the 
West. 

The  first  and  the  most  important  item  to  be 
mentioned  is  feudalism.  A  famous  living  French 
historian  once  told  me  that  it  was  absurd  to  speak 
of  Japanese  feudalism,  since  feudalism  was  a  spe- 
cial historical  phenomenon  originated  by  the 
Franks,  and  therefore  not  to  be  found  outside  of 
Europe.  How  is  the  word  "feudalism"  rightly  to 
be  defined  then?  May  it  not  be  extended  to  a 
similar  system  which  prevailed  in  western  Europe, 
but  not  under  Frankish  authority?  If  it  can  be 
said  that  feudalism  also  obtained  in  the  Swabian, 


Introduction  13 

the  Saxonian  and  the  Marcomanian  land,  surely 
it  would  not  be  absurd  to  extend  it  a  bit  further 
so  as  to  make  it  cover  similar  phenomena  which 
arose  in  non-European  countries,  for  example  in 
China  and  especially  in  Japan.  For  centuries  in 
Europe  historians  successively  tried  to  solve  the 
question,  What  is  feudalism?  A  great  number 
of  hypotheses  has  been  presented.  Some  of  them 
held  the  ground  against  their  antagonists  in  bitter 
scientific  controversies,  but  were  soon  obliged  to 
give  way  to  clever  newly-started  theories,  and  no 
conclusive  solution  has  yet  been  given  to  the  prob- 
lem. The  cause  of  the  failure  chiefly  lies  in  the 
mistaken  idea,  that  feudalism  is  a  kind  of  system- 
atic legislation,  which  originated  in  the  elabora- 
tion of  some  rules  put  together  by  some  sagacious 
ruler,  or  in  the  time-honoured  invention  of  some 
very  gifted  tribe,  and  starting  from  this  erroneous 
supposition  some  scholars  have  believed  that  they 
would  be  able  to  generalise  from  those  overwhelm- 
ingly chaotic  materials,  and  thereby  to  establish 
certain  fundamental  principles  applicable  to  the 
feudal  relation  of  whichever  country  they  chose. 
Far  from  their  assumption  being  true,  however, 
feudalism  is  not  an  invention  of  somebody,  made 
consciously,  nor  a  result  of  a  deliberately  devised 
enactment.  A  few  general  rules  may  be  extracted 
perhaps  by  so-called  generalising,  but  even  these 
few  would  be  provided  with  exceptional  condi- 
tions. Therefore,  the  truth  we  reach  at  last  by 
studying  the  historical  sources  concerning  feudal- 


14  History  of  Japan 

ism  is  rather  the  general  spirit  pervading  all  kinds 
of  feudalism,  and  not  any  concrete  rule  applicable 
everywhere,  as  we  see  in  the  case  of  natural  sci- 
ences. If  the  granting  of  the  usufruct  of  a  cer- 
tain extent  of  land  in  exchange  for  military  service 
is  the  essence  of  feudalism,  it  is  indisputable  that 
feudalism  existed  in  Japan  too. 

Feudalism  is  indeed  a  necessity,  as  a  Chinese 
servant  has  said  in  a  memorable  essay.  It  is  a 
necessity  which  any  nation  must  undergo,  if  that 
nation  is  to  become  consolidated.  Feudalism  is 
often  described  as  a  backward  movement  with 
respect  to  the  political  organisation.  Primitive 
races,  however,  cannot  be  described  as  having 
been  either  centralised  or  decentralised,  socially 
and  politically,  and  the  first  stage  which  they 
must  pass  is  that  of  a  vague  centralisation.  In 
this  stage,  superficially  observed,  it  appears  as  if 
the  race  were  centralised  at  one  point,  but  the 
truth  is  that  in  so  early  a  stage  of  civilisation,  it 
is  not  probable  that  more  than  one  prominent 
centre  would  at  once  be  formed  conspicuous 
enough  to  attract  attention.  And  even  that  one 
centre  itself  is  formed,  not  because  it  is  strong 
enough  to  centralise,  but  because  centripetalism 
actuates  the  environment,  and  no  other  force  is 
yet  so  strong  as  to  compete  with  it.  In  early 
times,  however,  the  degree  of  prominency  of  a 
single  centre  over  all  others  must  have  been  very 
slight.  As  time  passes,  lesser  centres  begin  to 
distinguish  themselves,  closely  following  the 


Introduction  15 

prominent  first  in  strength  of  centralisation,  and 
become  at  last  so  powerful  as  to  be  able  to  chal- 
lenge the  hegemony  of  the  first  centre.  This  state 
of  affairs  we  generally  denote  as  the  age  of  dis- 
memberment, as  if  a  true  centralisation  had  been 
accomplished  in  the  age  preceding.  This  view  is 
utterly  false.  Without  the  power  to  centralise, 
no  political  centre  can  be  said  to  exist  really,  and 
without  any  strong  centre  effective  centralisation  is 
not  possible.  The  apparent  centralised,  that  is  to 
say,  unified  condition  of  the  ancient  empires,  is 
nothing  but  a  chaotic  condition  with  one  bright 
point  only,  and  the  state  of  being  seemingly  dis- 
membered is  in  truth  a  step  toward  the  real  uni- 
fication, centralisation  in  partibus  paving  the  way 
for  centralisation  on  a  larger  scale.  This  phase 
in  the  preparatory  process  for  the  unity  and  con- 
solidation of  a  nation  is  feudalism  itself.  Feudal- 
ism is  a  test  through  which  every  nation  must  pass, 
if  it  aspires  to  become  a  well  organised  body  at 
all.  There  are  some  tribes,  indeed,  which  have 
never  passed  through  the  feudal  period  in  their 
history,  but  that  is  due  to  the  fact  that  these  tribes 
had  certain  defective  traits  which  hindered  them 
from  undergoing  that  experience,  and  on  account 
of  that  they  have  been  unable  to  achieve  a  sound, 
well-proportioned  progress  in  their  civilisation, 
which  must  necessarily  be  accompanied  by  a  well- 
organised  political  centralisation,  whether  it  be 
monarchical  or  democratic.  Other  nations  have 
passed,  it  is  true,  the  test  of  the  feudal  regime, 


16  History  of  Japan 

but  very  imperfectly,  and  for  that  reason  have 
had  great  difficulty  in  amending  the  defect  after- 
wards. 

By  no  means  need  we  lament  that  we  were 
under  the  feudal  regime  for  a  considerable  time 
in  our  history.  On  the  contrary,  I  am  rejoiced 
that  we  were.  Every  political  devolopment  must 
go  side  by  side  with  the  corresponding  social  pro- 
gress. The  latter,  unless  sheltered  by  the  for- 
mer, lacks  stability,  while  the  former,  if  unaccom- 
panied by  the  latter,  is  not  tenable,  and  will  break 
down  before  long  and  be  of  no  avail.  Feudalism 
can  be  compared  to  a  nut-shell,  which  protects 
the  kernel  till  it  quietly  consummates  its  matur- 
ing process  within.  Social  progress,  of  whatever 
sort  it  be,  ought  to  be  covered  by  a  political  re- 
gime of  a  certain  kind,  especially  adapted  to  dis- 
charge the  task  of  protection,  and  must  be  al- 
lowed thereby  to  prosecute  its  own  development 
free  from  disturbing  influences.  Feudalism  is  one 
of  the  political  regimes  indispensable  to  perform 
such  a  function.  Though  it  seems  to  be  fortunate 
for  a  nation  not  to  tarry  too  long  in  the  stage  of 
feudalism,  yet  it  is  not  desirable  for  the  nation 
to  emerge  out  of  this  stage  prematurely. 

To  sum  up,  in  order  that  a  nation  may  continue 
in  its  healthy  progress,  it  should  have  feudalism 
once  in  its  historical  course,  and  must  pass  that 
test  fairly.  And  as  passing  a  test  can  be  fruitful 
only  on  condition  that  that  test  itself  be  fair,  it 
becomes  necessary  as  a  natural  consequence  that 


Introduction  17 

a  fair  test  must  be  passed  fairly.  Then  how  is 
it  with  Japan?  It  cannot  be  safely  said  that  we 
have  passed  the  test  exceedingly  well,  but  at  the 
same  time  we  can  presume  that  we  have  not 
passed  it  badly.  If  someone  should  say  that  the 
Japanese  stayed  unnecessarily  long  in  that  con- 
dition and  have  not  even  yet  entirely  emerged 
from  it,  he  must  have  forgotten  that  even  the  most 
civilised  countries  of  Europe  could  not  shake  off 
the  shackles  of  the  feudal  system  entirely  until 
very  recent  times,  the  first  half  of  the  nineteenth 
century  still  retaining  an  easily  perceptible  tincture 
of  it,  as  we  see  in  the  survival  of  the  patrimonial 
jurisdiction  in  some  continental  states  of  Europe. 
On  the  other  hand  foreign  observers  generally 
fail  to  see  that  the  regime  of  the  Tokugawa  Sho- 
gunate,  which  I  shall  expatiate  upon  in  a  later 
chapter,  is  of  a  sort  quite  different  from  that  of 
the  European  feudalism  in  the  middle  ages,  and 
are  induced  to  believe  that  the  Japanese  nation 
has  been  quit  of  the  miserable  regime  for  only 
fifty  years.  These  views  are  both  totally  mis- 
taken. In  our  relation  to  feudalism,  we  went 
through  almost  the  same  experience  as  other  civil- 
ised nations  did,  neither  more  nor  less.  Because, 
in  so  far  as  we  speak  o'f  the  history  of  any  nation 
ranging  from  its  beginning  till  our  day,  more  than 
half  of  it  can  be  held  to  have  been  occupied  by 
feudalism,  the  history  of  Japan  may  also  be  said 
to  have  in  common  with  other  nations  more  than 


i8  History  of  Japan 

half  of  the  essential  elements  which  the  so-called 
history  of  the  world  could  teach. 

After  having  seen  that  our  history  is  not  totally 
unlike  that  of  the  nations  of  Europe  in  its  most 
essential  trait,  it  is  not  strange  that  the  history 
of  Japan  should  contain  many  other  things,  be- 
sides feudalism,  which  can  be  reckoned  as  the 
typical  items  necessary  to  make  up  the  history 
of  any  civilised  nation,  that  is  to  say,  as  the  chief 
ingredients  not  to  be  dispensed  with  in  the  world's 
history, — viz.,  various  religious  movements  keep- 
ing pace  with  the  social  development  at  large,  eco'- 
nomic  evolution  conditioning  and  conditioned  by 
the  changes  of  other  factors  constituting  civilisa- 
tion in  general,  etc.  As  the  foreign  influences  can 
be  traced  comparatively  distinctly,  the  history  of 
Japan  can,  to  a  large  extent,  be  subjected  to  a 
scientific  analysis.  So  if  we  look  lor  the  history 
of  a  nation,  which  is  fit  to  represent  the  gradual 
evolution  of  national  progress  in  general,  Japan- 
ese history  must  be  a  select  one.  It  is  in  this  re- 
spect that  I  said  that  the  history  of  our  country 
is  a  miniature  of  the  world's  history.  After  all 
the  history  of  Japan  is  not  so  simple  and  naive 
as  to  be  either  an  easy  topic  for  amateur  histor- 
ians, or  a  suitable  theme  for  ordinary  anthropolo- 
gists, ethnographers,  or  philologists,  who  are  not 
specially  qualified  to  deal  with  histories  of  civil- 
ised times.  Those  whom  I  should  heartily  wel- 
come as  the  investigators  of  the  history  of  our 
country,  are  those  historians  in  Europe  and  Amer- 


Introduction  19 

ica,  who,  more  than  amply  qualified  to  write  the 
history  of  their  own  countries,  have  continued  to 
disdain  extending  their  field  of  investigation  to 
the  corners  of  the  world,  thought  by  them  not 
civilised  enough  to  be  worthy  of  their  labour.  If 
they  care  to  peep  into  the  history  of  our  country, 
perhaps  the  result  will  not  be  so  barren  as  to 
disappoint  them  utterly.  The  greatest  misfor- 
tune to  our  country  at  the  present  day  is  that  her 
history  has  been  written  by  very  few  first-rate 
historians  of  Europe  and  America,  those  who 
have  written  upon  it  being  mostly  of  the  second 
or  third  rank.  Nay,  there  are  many  who  cannot 
be  called  historians  at  all.  The  best  qualifications 
they  have  are  that,  by  some  means  or  other,  they 
can  write  a  book,  or  that  they  were  once  residents 
of  Japan,  and  if  they  venture  to  write  a  history 
about  a  country  outside  of  their  own,  Japan  seems 
to  them  to  be  the  easiest  subject,  the  greater  part 
of  their  compatriots  being  quite  ignorant  of  it. 

I  dwell  thus  long,  however,  on  the  significance 
of  the  history  of  Japan,  not  in  order  to  silence 
these  quasi-historians,  nor  forcibly  to  induce  the 
first-rate  foreign  historian  to  study  the  history  of 
Japan  against  his  own  will.  The  former  attempt 
is  useless,  while  the  latter  may  be  almost  hope- 
less. The  principal  reason  for  having  long  dwelt 
on  the  subject,  is  only  to  have  it  understood  by 
foreigners,  that  the  Japanese  nation,  which  has 
such  an  advanced  historical  experience  in  the  past, 
is  not  to  be  considered  as  one  only  recently  awak- 


2O  History  of  Japan 

ened,  and  therefore  to  be  admired,  patted,  en- 
couraged, feared  and  despised  in  rapid  succes- 
sion. If  once  they  happen  to  understand  the  true 
history  of  Japan,  then  the  fluctuations  in  their 
estimation  of  us  will  also  cease;  then,  perhaps, 
we  shall  not  be  feared,  or  rather,  made  an  object 
of  scare  any  more,  as  now  we  are,  but  at  the  same 
time  we  shall  be  happy  not  to  be  disliked  or  re- 
jected. 


CHAPTER  II 

THE  RACES  AND  CLIMATE  OF  JAPAN 

WHICH  is  the  more  potent  factor  in  building 
up  the  edifice  of  civilisation,  race  or  climate? 
This  has  been  a  riddle  repeatedly  presented  to 
various  scholars  of  various  ages,  and  has  not  yet 
been  completely  solved.  The  immanent  force  of 
the  race  deeply  rooted  in  the  principle  of  heredity 
on  the  one  hand,  and  the  influence  of  the  physical 
milieu  on  the  other,  have  been,  are,  and  will  be, 
ever  the  two  important  factors,  cooperating  in 
engendering  any  sort  of  civilisation,  yet  are  they 
not  always  friendly  forces,  but,  in  a  sense,  rivals, 
competing  for  the  ascendency.  Looking  back 
into  the  history  of  the  interminable  controversy 
as  to  the  position  of  the  two,  and  taking  into  con- 
sideration the  fact  that  they  are  not  the  only  fac- 
tors contributing  to  the  progress  of  civilisation, 
it  would  perhaps  seem  to  be  a  waste  of  labour 
to  try  anew  to  solve  the  question.  If  one  should 
endeavour  to  explain  the  respective  importance 
of  the  two  factors,  putting  due  stress  on  each  at 
the  same  time,  he  would  then  be  in  danger  of 
falling  into  a  self-contradiction  or  of  begging  the 
question  endlessly;  otherwise  he  must  be  satisfied 

21 


22  History  of  Japan 

with  being  the  sermoniser  of  quite  a  commonplace 
truism!  This  is  not,  however,  the  place  to  enter 
into  a  discussion  to  determine  the  preponderant 
influence  of  either  of  the  two,  a  discussion  perhaps 
fruitful  enough,  but  almost  hopeless  of  arriving 
at  a  final  solution.  But  as  in  recording  the  his- 
tory of  any  country  one  should  begin  well  at  the 
beginning,  I,  too,  cannot  desist  from  starting  with 
a  description  of  the  race  and  of  the  climate,  with 
their  relations  to  the  history,  of  Japan. 

Of  these  two  factors,  I  need  not  say  much  about 
the  first.  It  is  about  forty  years  since  meteorolog- 
ical observations  have  been  regularly  and  con- 
tinuously made  in  this  country  and  the  results 
published  in  periodical  reports,  so  that  almost  all 
requisite  data  pertaining  to  the  climatology  of 
Japan  are  at  the  disposal  of  the  investigator. 
Assuming  that  the  climate  of  Japan  at  present, 
which  can  be  ascertained,  not  exhaustively  per- 
haps, but  scientifically  enough,  is  not  a  widely 
different  one  from  what  it  was  in  the  past,  there 
is  the  less  need  of  dwelling  upon  the  topic,  so 
far  as  the  scope  of  this  book  is  concerned.  I  will 
content  myself,  therefore,  with  treating  it  very 
briefly. 

Generally  speaking,  it  must  be  admitted  that  the 
ideal  climate  for  the  progress  of  civilisation  must 
not  be  either  a  very  hot  or  a  very  cold  one;  in 
other  words,  it  must  be  a  temperate  one.  At  the 
same  time,  it  is  necessarily  true  that,  for  the  sake 
of  fostering  a  civilisation,  the  climate  should  be 


The  Races  and  Climate  of  Japan    23 

stimulative,  that  is  to  say,  should  be  variable,  but 
not  running  to  such  extremes  as  to  impede  the 
vital  activity  of  the  population.  When  a  climate 
is  constant  and  has  no  seasonal  change,  that  cli- 
mate, however  mild  it  be,  is  very  enervating,  and 
not  fitted  for  any  strenuous  human  exertion,  phys- 
ical or  mental,  and  is  therefore  adverse  to  the  on- 
ward march  of  civilisation.  Judged  by  this  stand- 
ard, the  climate  of  Japan  is  a  good  one.  If  we 
put  aside  all  the  recently  organised  or  annexed 
parts  of  the  Empire,  that  is  to  say,  Korea,  Sa- 
ghalen,  Formosa,  Loochoo,  and  Hokkaido,  the  re- 
maining part,  that  is  to  say,  the  whole  of  historic 
Japan,  which  includes  the  three  principal  islands, 
was  formerly  divided  into  sixty-six  kuni  or  prov- 
inces, and  stretches  over  a  wide  range  of  lati- 
tude, extending  from  31° — 41.5°  N.,  so  that  the 
difference  in  temperature  at  its  two  extremes  is 
very  considerable.  It  must  be  remembered,  how- 
ever, that  the  difference  is  not  so  great  as  to  neces- 
sitate totally  different  modes  of  living.  In  the 
province  of  Satsuma,  for  instance,  the  falling  of 
snow  can  often  be  witnessed,  while  in  Mutsu  the 
temperature,  in  the  height  of  summer,  frequently 
climbs  above  90°  F.  The  southern  Japanese, 
therefore,  can  settle  in  the  northern  provinces 
quite  comfortably  without  changing  many  of  their 
accustomed  habits,  and  the  northerners,  on  the 
other  hand,  can  shift  their  abode  to  the  island  of 
Kyushu,  with  very  little  modification  in  their  ways 
of  living.  This  almost  .similar  way  of  living 


24  History  of  Japan 

throughout  the  whole  of  historic  Japan,  with  very 
,  slight  local  modifications  only,  is  the  cause  why 
*  U  the  unity  of  the  nation  was  accomplished  com- 
paratively easily. 

As  to  the  seasonal  changes,  they  occur  some- 
what frequently  in  Japan,  and  impart  a  highly 
stimulative  quality  to  her  climate.  According  to 
the  interesting  investigation  made  by  an  Ameri- 
can climatologist,  for  a  climate  to  be  stimulative 
it  is  neces^£ly  that  there  should  be  not  only 
marked  seasonal  changes,  but  also  frequent  varia- 
tions within  each  of  the  seasons  themselves,  and 
it  is  nothing  but  the  storms  which  induce  such  im- 
portant daily  climatic  changes.  If  we  may  accept 
his  conclusion,  then  Japan  may  rank  fairly  high 
among  the  countries  with  the  best  kind  of  climate. 
For  not  to  speak  of  the  seasonal  changes  so  clearly 
definable,  in  Japan,  the  cyclonic  storms,  the  main 
cause  of  the  daily  climatic  changes,  occur  very 
frequently.  It  can  be  said  that  no  one  desires 
to  have  them  occur  more  often  on  this  account. 
After  all,  the  climate  of  Japan  would  have  been 
almost  an  ideal  one,  if  there  had  been  less  rain 
in  the  early  summer,  the  long  rainy  season  being 
evidently  the  chief  cause  of  the  enervating  damp- 
ness. By  the  way,  it  should  be  remarked  that 
the  dampness  which  is  the  weakest  point  of  the 
climate  of  Japan,  not  only  in  the  summer,  but 
throughout  the  whole  year,  is  in  excess  more  in 
the  regions  bordering  on  the  Sea  of  Japan  than 
in  those  facing  the  Pacific  Ocean  and  the  Inland 


The  Races  and  Climate  of  Japan    25 

Sea.  This  fact  explains  the  historical  phe- 
nomenon that  the  most  momentous  events  in 
Japanese  history  have  taken  place  not  in 
the  former  but  in  the  larer  regions.  If  we 
look  into  the  history  of  Europe,  the  Inland  Sea 
of  Japan  has  its  counterpart  in  the  Mediterra- 
nean, the  Pacific,  in  the  Atlantic,  and  the 
Sea  of  Japan  in  the  Baltic  Sea.  Perhaps  the 
attentive  traveller  will  notice  that  the  same  grey- 
ish hue  of  the  sea-surface  can  be  perceived  in  the 
Sea  of  Japan  as  in  the  Baltic  Sea,  and  that  very 
sombre  colour  imparts  the  same  gloomy  tone  to 
the  atmosphere  of  the  regions  bordering  on  those 
two  seas.  It  is  true  that  many  mythical  legends 
of  our  country  have  their  scenes  in  the  coastal 
regions  along  the  Sea  of  Japan,  the  so-called 
"Back  of  Japan, "  and,  moreover,  in  standard  of 
civilisation,  these  regions,  compared  with  the 
other  parts  of  the  Empire,  decidedly  do  not  rank 
low.  That  is  due,  however,  not  to  the  influence 
of  the  fair  climate  prevailing  in  those  parts  of 
Japan,  but  to  the  proximity  of  the  Asiatic  conti- 
nent. For,  as  the  result  of  that  proximity,  there 
must  have  been  very  intimate  relations  between 
those  regions  of  Japan  and  the  continental  tribes 
on  the  opposite  shore,  some  of  whom  are  some- 
times supposed  to  have  had  the  same  origin  «6 
the  Japanese.  At  present  the  influence  of  the 
climatic  drawback  in  those  districts  is  very  evi- 
dent, and  it  will  be  in  the  distant  future  that  the 
time  will  arrive  when  the  "Back  of  Japan"  will 


26  History  of  Japan 

4>ecome  more  thriving  and  enlightened  than  the 
other  side  of  Japan  facing  the  Pacific,  unless  there 
should  be  a  sudden  upheaval  in  the  progress  of 
the  civilisation,  and  in  the  growth  of  prosperity, 
on  the  opposite  continental  shore. 

Between  northern  and  southern  Japan,  it  is 
not  very  easy  to  distinguish  what  influence  the 
climates  of  the  two  regions  had  on  their  history. 
It  is  certain  that  northern  Japan  is  inferior  to 
southern  Japan  in  climatic  conditions,  if  we  con- 
sider the  impediments  put  on  human  activity  there, 
on  account  of  the  intense  cold  during  the  winter. 
It  is  doubtful,  however,  whether  the  backward- 
ness of  the  North  in  the  forward  march  of  civili- 
sation can  be  solely  attributed  to  its  climatic  in- 
feriority. Even  in  the  depth  of  winter,  the  cold 
in  the  northern  provinces  of  Hon-to  cannot  be 
said  to  be  more  unbearable  and  unfit  for  the 
strenuous  activity  of  the  inhabitants,  than  that  of 
the  Scandinavian  countries  or  of  northeastern 
Germany.  The  principal  cause  of  the  retardation 
of  progress  in  northern  Japan  lies  rather  in  the 
fact  that  it  is  a  comparatively  recently  exploited 
part  of  the  Empire.  Since  the  beginning  of  his- 
toric times,  the  Japanese  have  pushed  their  settle- 
ments more  and  more  toward  the  north,  so  that 
the  population  in  those  regions  has  grown  denser 
and  denser.  If  this  process  had  continued  with 
the  same  vigour  until  today,  the  northern  prov- 
inces might  have  become  far  more  populous,  civil- 
ised, and  prosperous,  than  we  see  them  now. 


The  Races  and  Climate  of  Japan    27 

Unfortunately  for  the  North,  however,  just  at 
the  most  critical  time  in  its  development,  the  at- 
tention of  the  nation  was  compelled  to  turn  from 
inner  colonisation  to  foreign  relations.  Besides, 
the  subsequent  acquisition  of  new  dominions  over- 
sea made  the  nation  still  more  indifferent  to  the 
exploitation  of  the  less  remunerative  northern  half 
of  Hon-to.  As  to  the  climatic  conditions  of  Hok- 
kaido and  Loochoo,  it  is  needless  to  say  that 
they  are  far  different  from  that  of  the  historic 
part  of  the  Empire,  and  each  of  them  needs  spe- 
cial consideration.  They  have  had,  however,  . 
very  little  to  do  with  the  history  of  Japan.  The 
same  may  also  be  said  still  more  emphatically 
about  Formosa,  Saghalen,  and  Korea,  though  the 
influence  of  their  climates  on  the  destiny  of  future 
Japan  will  without  doubt  be  immense;  but  as  these 
regions  do  not  come  within  the  purview  of  my 
book,  I  can,  without  prejudice,  omit  further  ref- 
erence to  them. 

Together  with  the  climate,  the  race  stands  forth 
as  an  indispensable  factor  in  the  promotion  of  its 
civilisation.  Then  to  what  race  do  the  Japanese 
belong?  Can  all  the  people  of  Japan  be  homo- 
geneously comprised  under  a  single  racial  appella- 
tion, or  must  they  be  treated  as  an  agglomeration 
of  several  different  races?  Are  the  Japanese,  or 
the  bulk  at  least  of  the  Japanese,  indigenous  or 
immigrant?  If  the  Japanese  are  an  immigrant 
race,  then  whence  did  they  originate,  and  what  is 
the  probable  date  of  their  immigration  into  this 


28  History  of  Japan 

country?  What  race,  if  not  the  Japanese,  are 
the  aborigines  of  these  islands?  Questions  of 
this  kind,  and  others  of  a  similar  nature  have 
stood  waiting  for  solution  these  many  years !  But 
none  of  them  has  yet  been  completely  answered, 
though  attempts  have  been  made  not  only  by  a 
large  number  of  native  investigators,  professional 
as  well  as  amateur,  but  also  by  not  a  few  foreign 
philologists  and  archaeologists,  who  were  toler- 
ably well-versed  in  things  Japanese.  Recently 
many  interesting  excavations  of  ancient  tombs  and 
historical  sites  have  been  made,  and  various  re- 
mains pertaining  to  the  old  inhabitants  of  the 
islands  have  been  submitted  to  the  speculative 
scrutiny  of  specialists.  They  have  served,  how- 
ever, rather  to  lead  one  to  deeper,  more  obstinate, 
scepticism,  than  to  shed  light  on  those  doubtful 
and  tentative  answers  and  indecisive  controversies. 
It  is  very  much  to  be  regretted  that  we  have  no 
authentic  record  of  the  early  immigration  into 
Japan  from  the  pen  of  a  contemporaneous  writer, 
so  that  we  could  thereby  verify  the  interpretations 
assigned  to  the  remains  found  in  the  ancient 
tombs.  This  is  to  be  attributed  to  the  lack  of 
the  use  of  written  characters  among  the  aboriginal 
people,  as  well  as  to  the  illiteracy  of  the  early 
immigrants.  If  we  had  as  remains  of  prehistoric 
Japan  such  valuable  historic  materials  as  have 
been  excavated  in  Europe  and  Western  Asia,  we 
should  have  been  able  to  deduce  the  history  of  its 
early  ages  with  a  tolerable  degree  of  certainty 


The  Races  and  Climate  of  Japan    29 

from  the  remains  themselves,  independently  of 
any  documental  evidence.  Unfortunately,  how- 
ever, in  this  respect  also,  our  prehistoric  remains 
consist  only  of  a  few  kinds  of  earthenware,  mostly 
with  very  simple  patterns  on  them,  and  some 
other  kinds  of  primitive  utensils  of  daily  use,  such 
as  saddles,  bridles,  sword-blades,  and  the  like. 
Huge  tombstones  are  sometimes  found,  but  they 
have  no  such  inscriptions  as  we  see  on  many 
Greek  sarcophagi,  being  provided  only  with  a  few 
unintelligible,  perhaps  meaningless,  scratches.  As 
to  the  primitive  Japanese  ornaments,  very  few 
historical  data  can  be  gathered  from  them,  for 
they  are  generally  beads  of  very  simple  design, 
and  of  three  or  four  different  shapes.  It  is  quite 
hopeless  to  think  that  we  should  ever  be  able  to 
dig  out  a  single  dwelling,  not  to  speak  of  a  whole 
palace,  village,  or  town,  on  any  Japanese  histori- 
cal site,  since  no  stone,  brick  or  other  durable  ma- 
terial was  ever  used  in  the  construction  of  build- 
ings. As  our  stock  of  reliable,  authentic  infor- 
mation concerning  our  origins  is  so  scanty,  it  is 
at  the  disposal  of  any  one  to  manufacture  what- 
ever hypothesis  he  chooses,  however  wild  a  specu- 
lation it  be,  and  sustain  it  as  long  as  he  likes 
against  any  antagonist,  not  by  proving  it  positively 
and  convincingly,  but  by  pointing  out  the  impossi- 
bility of  the  opposing  hypothesis,  so  that  the 
present  state  of  archaeological  research  in  Japan 
may  be  summed  up  as  an  intellectual  skirmish  car- 
ried on  by  regular  as  well  as  by  irregular  militant 


y 

30  History  of  Japan 

scholars.  Therefore,  in  spite  of  the  fact  that 
Japan  now  abounds  in  ethnologists,  big  and  small, 
each  fashioning  some  new  hypothesis  every  day, 
there  can  be  perceived  only  a  very  slow  progress 
in  the  solution  of  the  fundamental  question,  "Who 
are  the  Japanese?"  We  are  almost  at  a  loss  to 
decide  to  which  assertion  we  can  most  agreeably 
give  our  countenance  with  the  least  risk  of  re- 
ceiving an  immediate  setback.  So  I  shall  be  con- 
tent to  state  here  only  those  hypotheses,  which 
may  be  considered  comparatively  safe,  although 
they  may  not  rise  far  above  the  level  of  conjecture. 
The  only  thing  virtually  agreed  to  by  all  inves- 
tigators engaged  in  ethnological  inquiry  concern- 
ing Japan,  is  that  the  Ainu  is  the  aboriginal  race, 
and  that  the  Japanese  so  called  belongs  to  a  stock 
different  from  the  Ainu.  Once  for  a  time  there 
prevailed  a  hypothesis  that  there  was  a  people 
settled  in  this  country  previous  to  the  coming 
of  the  Ainu,  who  must  be  therefore  an  immigrant 
race.  It  is  said  that  the  Ainu  called  this  people 
by  the  name  of  Koropokkuru.  But  very  little  in- 
deed is  known  about  these  supposed  autochthons, 
except  that  they  were  very  small  in  stature,  and 
that  this  pigmy  race  receded  and  vanished  before 
the  advancing  Ainu.  The  theory  had  its  founda- 
tion only  in  some  Ainu  legends,  and  was  not  sup- 
ported by  any  archaeological  remains,  which  could 
be  attributed,  not  to  the  Ainu,  but  to  a  special 
pigmy  race  only.  Much  reliance,  therefore,  could 
not  be  placed  upon  this  hypothesis,  or  rather 


The  Races  and  Climate  of  Japan    31 

vague  suggestion,  and  it  was  speedily  dropped. 
Still  it  is  not  yet  decided  whether  the  Ainu  is  the 
real  autochthon  in  Japan  or  an  immigrant  from 
some  quarter  outside  the  Empire.  Most  of  the 
Ainologists  are  rather  inclined  to  the  opinion  that 
the  Ainu  himself  is  also  an  immigrant,  though  no 
other  race  prior  to  him  had  settled  in  Japan.  But 
then  there  arises  among  scholars  another  disagree- 
ment, that  about  the  original  home  of  the  race. 
Some  hold  the  opinion  that  the  Ainu  came  over 
to  the  Japanese  islands  from  the  north  or  the 
northwest,  that  is,  from  some  coastal  region  of  the 
Asiatic  continent  on  the  other  side  of  the  Sea  of 
Japan.  And  there  are  not  a  few,  too,  who  not 
only  trace  the  origin  of  the  race  into  the  heart 
of  Asia,  but  even  go  so  far  as  to  say  that  the 
Ainu  came  from  the  same  cradle  as  the  Cau- 
casian race.  3ome  go  still  further  and  localise 
the  origin  of  the  race  more  minutely,  identifying 
the  race  as  a  branch  of  the  protonordic  race,  akin 
to  the  modern  Scandinavians.  On  the  other  hand 
there  is  a  certain  number  of  ethnologists,  who  en- 
tertain the  opinion  that  the  Ainu  immigrated  into 
Japan,  from  the  south,  and  not  from  the  north; 
but  no  specified  locality  in  the  south  has  yet  been 
designated  as  the  original  home  of  the  race.  The 
last  hypothesis  seems,  however,  not  to  be  untena- 
ble, when  we  consider  that  in  historic  times  the 
Japanese  drove  the  Ainu  more  and  more  north- 
ward, till  the  latter  lost  entirely  its  foothold  in 
Hon-to,  and  was  at  last  hemmed  in  within  a  small 


32  History  of  Japan 

area  in  the  island  of  Hokkaido  and  the  adjacent 
islets.  From  this  fact  it  can  be  imagined  with 
some  probability  that  the  same  direction  of  ex- 
pansion might  have  been  taken  by  the  Ainu  also 
in  prehistoric  times.  The  custom  of  tattooing, 
also,  which  can  be  very  seldom  seen  among  the 
northern  Asiatic  tribes,  suggests  to  us,  though 
faintly,  the  possibility  of  the  existence  of  a  certain 
kind  of  affinity  between  the  Ainu  and  the  inhabi- 
tants of  the  tropical  regions.  On  the  other  hand, 
if  we  turn  our  attention  to  the  outward  features 
of  the  Ainu  race,  and  remember  that  races  very 
much  resembling  the  Ainu  are  still  lingering  on 
the  northeastern  shores  of  Asia,  the  immigration 
from  the  northwest  becomes  not  utterly  improb- 
able. Even  the  supposition  that  the  Ainu  belongs 
to  the  Aryan  stock  cannot  be  rejected  as  quite  a 
worthless  speculation,  if  the  paleness  of  the  com- 
plexion, the  shape  of  the  skull,  and  some  other 
characteristic  features  be  taken  into  account.  In 
short,  the  ethnological  uncertainty  regarding  the 
Ainu  race  is,  in  all  likelihood,  one  of  the  prin- 
cipal causes  of  the  obscurity  concerning  Japanese 
race-origins.  Sometime  in  the  future,  I  have  no 
doubt,  the  racial  riddle  concerning  the  Ainu  will 
be  cleared  from  the  haze  in  which  it  is  now 
shrouded.  Here,  however,  especially  as  I  am  not 
now  treating  of  ethnology,  I  will  avoid  forming 
any  hasty  conclusion,  and  leave  the  question  as 
it  stands. 

Whether  the  Ainu  be  autochthonous  or  immi- 


The  Races  and  Climate  of  Japan    33 

grant,  and  whatever  be  the  original  home  of  the 
race,  if  immigrant  at  all,  the  hairy  people,  it  is 
true,  once  spread  all  over  these  islands,  not  in 
Hon-t'o  only,  but  even  to  the  southern  end  of  the 
island  of  Kyushu.  This  can  be  proved  by  the 
pottery  excavated  in  the  provinces  of  Satsuma 
and  Ohsumi,  and  also  by  several  geographical 
names  in  Kyushu,  the  etymological  origin  of  which 
may  best  be  traced  to  an  Ainu  source.  As  a  mat- 
ter of  fact,  the  Ainu  had  been  gradually  driven 
northward,  and  the  island  of  Kyushu  wrested 
from  their  hands,  before  the  dawn  of  the  histori- 
cal age,  leaving  perhaps  here  and  there  patches  of 
tribesmen,  who  were  too  brave  or  not  speedy 
enough  to  flee  before  the  advancing  conquerors. 
And  those  remnants,  too,  after  a  faint  survival  of 
some  generations,  were  at  last  subdued,  extermin- 
ated, or  swallowed  up  among  the  multitudes  of 
the  surrounding  victorious  race  or  races.  Thus 
Shikoku,  the  island  of  the  four  provinces,  and 
the  southwestern  part  of  Hon-to  were  evacuated 
by  the  Ainu  before  the  end  of  the  prehistoric  age. 
When  the  curtain  rises  on  Japanese  history,  we 
find  the  Ainu  fighting  hard  against  the  Japanese 
in  the  north  of  Hon-to. 

We  have  here  designated  the  vanquishers  of 
the  Ainu,  for  the  sake  of  convenience,  simply  by 
the  name  of  Japanese.  Were  they  the  Japanese 
in  the  same  sense  as  the  word  is  understood  by 
us  now?  Were  the  vanquishers  a  homogeneous 
people,  or  a  heterogeneous  one?  If  the  Japanese 


34  History  of  Japan 

were  heterogeneous,  who  were  the  first  comers 
among  them?  Who  were  the  most  prominent? 
All  these  are  questions  very  hard  to  answer 
clearly.  It  is  sometimes  argued  that  we  had  only 
one  stock  of  people  in  Japan  besides  the  Ainu, 
and  that  that  stock  is  the  homogeneous  Japanese. 
This  view  is  not  avowed  openly  by  any  scholar 
worthy  of  mention,  for  it  is  an  undeniable  fact 
that  in  the  historical  ages  groups  of  immigrants, 
intentional  as  well  as  unintentional,  happened  to 
drift  into  Japan  now  and  then,  not  only  from 
Korea  and  China,  but  from  the  southern  islands 
also,  though  not  in  great  numbers,  and  the  occur- 
rence of  migrations  similar  to  those  in  historic 
ages  cannot  be  absolutely  denied  to  prehistoric 
times.  Besides,  any  one  who  pays  even  but  cur- 
sory attention  to  the  physical  features  of  the  Jap- 
anese can  easily  discern  that,  besides  those  who 
might  be  regarded  as  of  a  genuine  Korean  or  Chi- 
nese type,  there  are  many  among  them  who 
have  a  physiognomy  quite  different  from  either 
the  Korean  or  the  Chinese,  though  one  might 
be  at  a  loss  to  tell  exactly  whether  the 
tincture  of  the  Malayan,  Polynesian,  or  Mel- 
anesian  blood  is  predominant.  In  face  of 
such  diversity,  too  clear  to  be  neglected,  none 
would  be  bold  enough  to  assert  that  the  Japanese 
has  been  a  homogeneous  race  from  the  beginning. 
Strangely  enough,  however,  this  evidently  untena- 
ble conception  still  lies  at  the  bottom  of  many 


The  Races  and  Climate  of  Japan    35 

historical  hypotheses,  which  will  be  set  right  in 
the  future. 

If  it  is  most  probable  that  the  Japanese  is  a 
heterogeneous  race,  then  what  are  the  elements 
which  constitute  it?  The  results  of  the  investi- 
gation of  many  scholars  tend  to  place  the  home 
of  the  bulk  of  the  forefathers  of  the  so-called 
Japanese  in  the  northeast  of  the  Asiatic  continent. 
Perhaps,  from  the  purely  philological  point  of 
view,  this  assumption  may  be  more  approximate 
to  the  truth  than  any  other.  The  singular  posi- 
tion of  the  Japanese  language  in  the  linguistic  sys- 
tem of  the  world  leaves  little  room  for  the  hypo- 
thesis that  the  bulk  of  the  race  came  from  the 
south,  though  it  is  not  at  all  easy  to  derive  it 
from  the  north.  In  our  language  we  have  very 
few  words  in  common  with  those  now  prevailing 
in  the  islands  which  stud  the  sea  to  the  south  of 
Japan,  or  in  the  southern  part  of  the  Asiatic  con- 
tinent. On  the  other  hand,  the  language  the  most 
akin  to  ours  is  the  Korean,  though  the  gap  be- 
tween it  and  the  Japanese  language  is  far  wider 
than  that  between  the  Korean  and  the  other  con- 
tinental languages,  such  as  the  Mongolian  and 
the  Manchurian.  If  we  take,  therefore,  linguis- 
tic similarity  as  the  sole  test  of  the  existence  of 
racial  affinity,  as  many  scholars  are  prone  implic- 
itly to  do,  then  the  bulk  of  the  Japanese  must  be- 
long to  a  stock  which  stood  at  some  time  very 
near  to  the  forefathers  of  the  Koreans,  though 
not  descended  from  the  Koreans  themselves.  In 


36  History  of  Japan 

other  words,  the  Japanese  race  may  be  supposed 
to  have  had  as  its  integral  part  a  stock  of  people, 
who  might  have  lived  side  by  side  with  the  an- 
cestors of  the  Koreans  for  a  longer  time  than 
with  other  kindred  tribes.  And  if  that  be  really 
so,  the  Japanese  must  have  separated  from  the 
Koreans  long  before  the  end  of  the  prehistoric 
ages;  otherwise  we  cannot  account  for  so  wide  a 
divergence  of  the  two  languages  as  we  see  at 
present. 

It  is  a  very  dangerous  feat,  of  course,  to  deter- 
mine any  ethnological  question  solely  from  a  philo- 
logical standpoint.  For  the  sake  of  argument, 
however,  let  us  assume  for  a  while  the  hypothesis 
that  the  main  element  in  the  Japanese  race  came 
over  from  the  northern  Asiatic  continent  on  the 
opposite  shore  of  the  Sea  of  Japan,  by  way,  per- 
haps, of  the  peninsula  of  Korea  and  the  island  of 
Tsushima,  or  across  the  Sea  of  Japan.  The  eth- 
nologists who  adopt  this  view  assume  that  the 
Chinese  must  be  excluded  from  the  above  body 
of  immigrants,  the  Chinese  who  were  doubtlessly 
a  far  more  advanced  people  even  in  those  ages 
than  the  other  neighbouring  races,  and  were  des- 
tined to  become  the  most  influential  benefactors 
of  Japanese  civilisation.  If  regarded  from  the 
linguistic  point  of  view  only,  it  may  be  not  at  all 
unnatural  thus  to  exclude  the  Chinese  blood  from 
the  veins  of  our  forefathers.  In  order  to  do  so, 
however,  it  would  be  necessary  at  the  same  time 
to  presuppose  that  the  Chinese  never  came  into 


The  Races  and  Climate  of  Japan    37 

close  contact  with  the  forefathers  of  the  Japan- 
ese while  the  latter  were  sojourning  on  the  Asiatic 
continent.  It  is  not,  of  course,  impossible  to  sup- 
pose that  the  ancestors  of  the  greater  part  of  the 
Japanese  came  over  into  this  country  without 
touching  China  anywhere,  because  they  might 
have  come  from  eastern  Siberia,  northern  Man- 
churia, or  some  other  quarter,  narrowly  avoiding 
coming  into  contact  with  the  Chinese,  though,  ac- 
tually, it  is  not  a  very  easy  matter  to  imagine  such 
a  case. 

Let  us,  then,  drop  all  idea  of  the  Chinese,  and 
suppose  that  that  race  can  be  put  aside  in  our 
consideration  of  the  prehistoric  Japanese  without 
glaring  unnaturalness.  Still  the  question  remains 
unsettled,  whether  the  bulk  of  our  ancestors  from 
the  continent  contained  within  it  the  ruling  class, 
who  gave  a  unity  to  the  heterogeneous  population 
of  this  Island  Empire.  One  would  say  that  a  cer- 
tain stock  among  many,  who  had  their  abode  in 
northeastern  Asia,  might  have  become  predomi- 
nant over  the  kindred  people  of  various  stocks 
settled  previously  in  Japan.  And  the  cause  of  the 
predominance  may  be  supposed  to  have  been  a 
decided  advance  in  civilisation  on  the  part  of  the 
chosen  stock.  That  is  to  say,  the  tribe  in  ques- 
tion might  have  been  already  in  the  iron  age  with 
respect  to  its  civilisation,  while  other  tribes  were 
still  lingering  in  the  neolithic  age.  But  in  order 
to  sustain  this  supposition,  it  is  necessary  to  pre- 
mise another  assumption  that  the  predominant 


38  History  of  Japan 

stock  was  comparatively  late  in  coming  over  to 
Japan,  and  that  it  had  already  attained  the  civil- 
isation of  the  iron  age  before  its  immigration  into 
Japan  while  the  other  inferior  tribes  remained  at  a 
standstill  in  their  civilisation  after  settling  in  our 
country.  Such  an  assertion,  however,  cannot  be 
deemed  probable  without  admitting  that  there 
was  a  considerable  interruption  of  communication 
between  Japan  and  the  Asiatic  continent  before 
the  immigration  of  the  predominant  stock.  Other- 
wise it  would  be  very  difficult  to  entertain  the  idea 
that  the  civilisation  of  northeastern  Asia  could  re- 
main alien  to  the  inhabitants  of  Japan  for  so  long 
a  time  as  to  cause  a  wide  difference  in  language, 
manners  and  customs,  and  so  on,  between  the  peo- 
ples on  the  two  opposite  shores  of  the  Sea  of 
Japan. 

Besides,  to  suppose  that  the  forefathers  of  the 
greater  portion  of  the  Japanese  people  were  im- 
migrants from  northeastern  Asia,  is,  by  itself, 
nothing  but  a  hypothesis,  supported  by  a  few  re- 
mains only,  which  can  be  interpreted  in  more  than 
one  way.  To  go  one  step  farther,  and  assume 
that  the  ruling  class  of  the  Japanese  too  came 
over  from  the  continental  shore  of  the  Sea  of  Ja- 
pan is  another  matter,  too  uncertain  to  be  readily 
accepted.  Whatever  degree  of  probability  there 
may  be  in  these  assertions,  there  are  certain  items 
in  our  history  to  the  natural  interpretation  of 
which  any  solution  of  all.  the  ethnological  prob- 


The  Races  and  Climate  of  Japan    39 

lems  must  conform;  and  among  those  items  the 
following  are  the  most  important. 

The  first  to  be  considered  is  the  style  of  the 
Japanese  building,  especially  the  style  of  the 
Shinto  shrines  and  of  the  dancing  halls  frequently 
attached  to  them.  The  architectural  style  of  the 
ordinary  Japanese  house  has  undergone  many 
successive  changes  during  the  long  course  of  its 
history,  so  that  its  primitive  form  is  now,  to  a 
great  extent,  lost.  For  instance,  the  tatami,  a 
thick  mat,  which  covers  the  floor  of  a  Japanese 
room  and  is  now  one  of  the  most  remarkable 
characteristics  of  Japanese  household  fittings,  is 
a  comparatively  modern  invention,  only  planks 
having  been  originally  used  as  the  material  for 
flooring.  Buddhistic  influences  too  can  be  traced 
distinctly  in  a  certain  turn  of  construction  copied 
from  China,  first  in  building  Buddhistic  temples 
and  then  widely  adopted  in  building  ordinary 
dwelling-houses.  In  some  essential  points,  how- 
ever, there  are  several  traits  which  cannot  be  as- 
cribed either  to  an  imitation  of  any  continental 
style  or  to  the  result  of  a  gradual  adaptation  to 
the  climate.  Any  one  can  easily  see  that  the  ordin- 
ary Japanese  house  may  be  good  for  summer 
and  for  southern  Japan,  but  not  for  winter,  es- 
pecially for  the  rigid  winter  of  northern  Japan. 
How  did  such  a  style  come  into  being?  If  it  had 
been  brought  from  the  northeast  of  the  Asiatic 
continent  by  the  ancient  immigrants  from  those 
quarters,  it  should  have  been  a  style  more  adapted 


40  History  of  Japan 

to  the  rigid  climate  of  northern  Japan,  than  we 
find  it  is.  On  the  other  hand,  if  it  were  an  out- 
come of  a  natural  development  on  the  Japanese 
soil,  it  should  have  been  one  more  adapted  to  the 
climate,  as  suitable  for  the  winter  as  for  the  sum- 
mer. Does  it  not  amount  almost  to  an  absurdity, 
that  the  Japanese  should  still  be  following  this 
ancient  style  of  architecture  in  building  their 
houses  in  Manchuria  and  Saghalen?  Why  do 
they  cling  to  it  so  tenaciously?  One  would  say, 
perhaps,  that  the  architectural  form  of  the  ordin- 
ary Japanese  house  has  undergone  changes  from 
various  causes,  so  that  one  cannot  fairly  draw 
absolutely  correct  conclusions  about  the  primitive 
dwellings  of  the  ancient  Japanese  from  its  pres- 
ent condition.  If  that  be  so,  let  us  take  the  style 
of  the  Shinto  buildings  into  consFderation.  If  it 
can  be  thought,  with  reason,  that  the  Shinto 
building  still  best  retains  some  of  the  character- 
istics of  the  primitive  Japanese  house,  then  the 
thatched  roof  of  a  peculiar  construction  with  pro- 
jecting beams  at  both  ends  of  the  ridge-pole,  to- 
gether with  a  highly  elevated  floor,  the  space  be- 
tween which  and  the  ground  serves  sometimes  as 
a  cellar,  cannot  but  suggest  the  existence  of  a  cer- 
tain relation  between  the  primitive  houses  of  Ja- 
pan and  those  of  the  tropical  regions  lying  to  the 
south  of  Asia,  such  as  the  Dutch  East  Indian 
Archipelago  and  the  Philippine  Islands,  or  the 
southeastern  coast  of  the  Asiatic  continent. 
The  next  point  not  to  be  neglected  is  rice  as  the 


The  Races  and  Climate  of  Japan    41 

staple  food  of  the  Japanese.  Everybody  knows 
that  rice  is  a  daily  food  stuff  not  only  of  the  Jap- 
anese, but  of  the  Chinese  and  many  other  Asiatic 
peoples.  In  the  case  of  the  inhabitants  of  north- 
ern China,  however,  other  kinds  of  cereals  are 
eaten  as  well  as  rice,  as  a  natural  consequence  of 
the  scanty  production  of  the  latter  in  those  regions. 
And  it  is  worthy  of  notice  that  even  in  southern 
China  this  cereal  is  eaten  not  as  is  customary  in  our 
country.  There  they  eat  rice  as  well  as  meat,  or 
rather  more  meat  than  rice,  while  here  in  Japan 
meat  and  fish  are  mere  ancillary  foods,  rice  being 
the  chief  article  of  diet.  What  is  the  cause  of 
this  difference  in  the  use  of  rice?  Is  Japan  spe- 
cially adapted  for  the  production  of  this  grain? 
Southern  Japan  of  course  is  not  unfit  for  the  cul- 
tivation of  the  plant,  viewed  from  the  point  of 
soil  and  warm  climate  only.  But  even  there  the 
rice  crop  is  very  uncertain  on  account  of  the  Sep- 
tember typhoons,  which  annually  bring  new 
wrinkles  of  anxious  care  on  the  weatherbeaten 
faces  of  our  farmers.  So  a  fortiori  rice  does  not 
conform  to  the  climate  of  northern  Japan,  where 
the  frost  arrives  often  very  early  and  the  whole 
crop  is  thereby  damaged,  except  a  few  precocious 
varieties.  This  explains  the  reason,  why  there 
have  been  repeated  famines  in  that  region,  occur- 
ring so  frequently  that  it  can  be  said  to  be  an  al- 
most chronic  phenomenon.  By  the  choice  of  this 
uncertain  kind  of  crop  as  the  principal  food  stuff, 
the  Japanese  have  been  obliged  to  acquiesce  in  a 


42  History  of  Japan 

comparatively  enhanced  cost  of  living,  which  is 
a  great  drawback  to  the  unfettered  activity  of 
any  individual  or  nation.  This  is  especially  true 
of  recent  times,  since  the  growth  of  the  population 
has  been  constantly  forging  ahead  in  comparison 
with  the  increase  of  the  annual  production  of  rice. 
The  tardiness  of  the  progress  of  civilisation  in 
Japanese  history  may,  perhaps,  be  partly  attrib- 
uted to  this  fact.  Then  why  did  our  forefathers 
prefer  rice  to  other  kinds  of  cereals,  in  spite  of 
the  uncertainty  of  its  harvests?  Was  it  really  a 
choice  made  in  Japan?  If  the  choice  was  first 
made  in  this  country,  then  the  unwisdom  of  the 
choice  and  of  the  choosers  is  now  very  patent. 
On  the  other  hand,  to  suppose  that  this  choice 
was  made  by  our  ancestors  in  northeastern  Asia 
during  their  sojourn  in  those  regions  is  hardly 
possible.  Moreover,  the  general  use  of  rice  in 
Japan  has  been  constantly  increasing.  In  old 
times  the  use  of  it  was  not  so  common  among  all 
classes  of  the  people,  though  now  it  can  be  found 
everywhere  in  Japan.  This  fact  also  leads  us  to 
doubt  the  assumption  that  the  cultivation  of  rice 
was  initiated  in  Japan,  or  that  it  was  brought  by 
our  ancestors  from  their  supposed  continental 
home  in  northeastern  Asia. 

What  thirdly  claims  our  attention  is  the  maga- 
tdma,  a  kind  of  green  bead,  varying  in  size.  It 
is  one  of  the  few  ornaments  peculiar  to  the  an- 
cient Japanese,  though  it  does  not  seem  probable 
that  its  material  was  naturally  produced  in  our 


The  Races  and  Climate  of  Japan    43 

country.  Without  doubt  our  ancestors  were  very 
fond  of  this  kind  of  bijouterie.  It  has  been  ex- 
cavated in  great  numbers  from  old  tombs, 
throughout  the  whole  of  historic  Japan,  and  the 
sepulchral  existence  of  the  magatama  is  now  gen- 
erally admitted  by  most  Japanologists  as  an  un- 
mistakable token  of  a  former  settlement  of  the 
Japanese.  It  must,  however,  be  remarked  that, 
on  the  Asiatic  continent,  magatama  are  found  in 
southern  Korea  only,  the  region  which  once 
formed  a  part  of  the  Japanese  Empire.  Surely 
it  should  have  been  discovered  in  northern  Korea 
and  on  the  Siberian  coast  of  the  Sea  of  Japan  also, 
if  our  forefathers,  inclusive  of  the  ruling  class, 
came  over  from  northeastern  Asia.  It  is  very 
curious  that  nothing  of  the  kind  has  been  discov- 
ered as  yet  in  those  supposed  original  homes  of 
the  Japanese. 

The  last  item  we  must  mention  here  is  the 
misogi.  The  misogi  is  an  old  religious  custom  of 
lustration  by  bathing  in  cold  water.  In  a  legend 
of  our  mythical  age,  there  is  an  account  of  this 
antique  ritual  performed  by  two  ancestral  deities 
in  a  river  in  Kyushu,  and  this  ritual  has  come 
down  to  our  day,  of  course  with  some  modifica- 
tions. The  custom  of  actually  bathing  in  the 
water  was  afterward  superseded  by  the  throw- 
ing of  effigies  into  a  river,  in  the  annual  ceremony 
of  praying  publicly  to  deities.  In  medieval  Japan 
this  usage  continued  to  be  practised  at  a  riverside 
in  the  summer;  but  it  is  almost  extinct  nowadays. 


44  History  of  Japan 

On  the  other  hand,  not  as  a  public  ceremony, 
but  as  a  method  of  individual  self-purification, 
this  custom  of  lustration  is  still  practised  by 
many  pious  persons.  Almost  entirely  naked, 
even  in  the  winter  of  northern  Japan,  they  pour 
on  themselves  several  bucketfuls  of  cold  water, 
and  thus  purify  themselves  from  head  to  foot,  in 
order  to  attest  a  very  special  devotion  to  the 
deities  to  whom  they  pray.  This  custom  of  bath- 
ing with  its  religious  signification  is  something 
that  cannot  find  its  likeness  anywhere  else,  either 
in  northeastern  Asia,  or  in  China,  or  in  Korea. 
Whence,  then,  did  the  ancient  Japanese  get  this 
unique  custom?  Would  it  not  be  natural  to  sup- 
pose the  custom  of  bathing,  including  its  religious 
use,  to  have  originated  in  some  quarter  of  the 
torrid  regions  of  the  earth  than  to  speak  of  it  a:, 
initiated  in  the  frigid  zone? 

All  the  four  items  mentioned  above  ought  by  all 
means  to  be  interpreted  adequately  and  naturally, 
whatever  standpoint  one  may  take  in  solving 
ethnological  questions  concerning  the  Japanese. 
The  hypothesis  that  the  bulk  of  our  fore- 
fathers might  have  been  immigrants  from  north* 
eastern  Asia,  is,  as  already  said  before,  by  itself 
nothing  but  an  assertion,  supported  mainly  by  the 
form  of  certain  prehistoric  pottery,  which  may 
possibly  be  interpreted  otherwise,  perhaps  disad- 
vantageously,  too,  for  the  assertion.  We  may 
accept  the  hypothesis  as  probable,  taking  into  con- 
sideration the  proximity  of  the  supposed  home 


The  Races  and  Climate  of  Japan    45 

of  our  ancestors  to  Japan.  But  it  avails  us  not 
at  all  in  interpreting  the  points  which  I  have 
enumerated  above.  On  the  contrary,  if  we  concur 
with  the  supposition  that  the  ruling  class,  also, 
of  the  Japanese  has  its  original  home  in  the  north- 
eastern part  of  the  Asiatic  continent  like  the  bulk 
of  the  race,  then  the  interpretation  of  the  afore- 
said items  would  become  more  difficult.  It  is  true 
that  those  who  would  like  to  derive  the  origin 
of  the  Japanese  from  northeastern  Asia,  do  not 
absolutely  deny  the  existence  of  a  certain  tropical 
element  in  the  final  formation  of  the  Japanese 
race,  but  generally  they  think  that  the  element 
must  have  been  very  insignificant.  They  would 
never  go  so  far  as  to  look  to  the  element  for  the 
bulk  of  our  forefathers  or  for  the  ancestors  of 
the  ruling  class.  If  the  tropical  element  be  as  in- 
significant as  they  suppose,  then  we  should  be 
naturally  induced  to  imagine  that  those  customs 
alien  in  their  essential  nature  to  the  soil  and  cli- 
mate of  Japan  were  imported  by  those  immigrants 
from  the  tropical  South  who,  insignificant,  not  only 
in  number,  but  also  in  influence,  have,  notwith- 
standing, taken  a  firm  root  in  the  historical  and 
social  life  of  the  Japanese,  struggling  against  the 
opposition  of  overwhelming  odds,  far  more  num- 
erous, civilised,  and  powerful,  an  utterly  impos- 
sible hypothesis.  How  then,  did  such  an  incon- 
gruous idea  with  its  fatal  conclusions  come  to  be 
entertained  by  scholars?  Because  they  have  too 
great  a  faith  in  the  power  of  civilisation,  so-called, 


46  History  of  Japan 

to  decide  the  rise  and  fall  of  races  in  the  primi- 
tive age. 

Those  who  would  uphold  the  assumption  of 
the  northern  origin  of  the  Japanese,  or  at  least 
of  its  ruling  class,  tacitly  presuppose  that  the 
northeastern  Asiatics  of  the  prehistoric  age  were 
several  steps  ahead  of  the  contemporary  tropical 
peoples  in  the  progress  of  civilisation,  or  at  least 
that  one  of  the  many  tribes  of  northeastern  Asia 
was  far  superior  to  its  neighbours  as  regards  civil- 
isation. Otherwise  they  think  that  a  certain  stock 
of  people,  which  afterwards  became  the  ruling 
class  in  Japan,  had  attained  already  the  civilisa- 
tion of  the  iron  age  while  they  were  still  on  the 
continent,  so  that  when  they  came  over  to  Japan 
they  would  have  been  far  more  advanced  than 
the  people  who  had  settled  in  Japan  before  them. 
Though  it  is  but  a  conjecture,  it  is  good  so  far  as 
it  goes.  To  deduce  the  domination  over  alien 
races  simply  from  the  superiority  of  the  civilisa- 
tion must  be  another  thing.  Even  in  modern 
times,  sheer  valour  often  tells  more  than  super- 
iority of  arms  in  deciding  the  fate  of  battles.  This 
must  have  been  even  more  true  in  early  ages. 
The  empire  of  Rome  was  broken  asunder  by  the 
semi-civilised  Germans.  In  the  East,  China  was 
repeatedly  overrun  by  nomadic  tribes  far  inferior 
to  the  Chinese  in  civilisation.  What  is  true  in 
this  respect  in  historic  times,  must  be  particularly 
true  in  prehistoric  ages.  It  is  too  superficial  to 
think  that  a  tribe  in  the  stage  of  the  iron  age 


The  Races  and  Climate  of  Japan    47 

must  necessarily  conquer  in  fighting  against  other 
tribes  knowing  and  using  stone  weapons  only.  In 
those  ages  it  is  strength,  ferocity,  courage,  which 
tell  decidedly  more  in  fighting  than  any  weapon. 
We  need  not  therefore  take  much  account  of  the 
state  of  civilisation  among  different  primitive 
tribes  in  determining  the  origin  of  the  Japanese 
race. 

On  the  other  hand,  we  are  in  no  wise  bound  to 
minimise  the  significance  of  the  tropical  element, 
in  number  as  well  as  in  influence,  as  regards  the 
formation  of  the  Japanese  people.  The  remark- 
able differences  in  distance  make  it  very  natural 
to  suppose  that  the  immigrants  from  the  tropical 
regions  might  have  been  less  numerous  than  those 
from  the  north.  Still  it  is  not  utterly  improbable 
that  a  pretty  substantial  number  of  the  Southern- 
ers might  have  come  over  into  Japan,  drifted 
over  not  only  by  the  current  but  by  the  wind  also, 
sometimes  in  groups,  sometimes  sporadically,  and 
that  they  could  subdue  the  inhabitants  by  force  of 
martial  courage  yet  unenervated  and  not  by  that 
of  a  superior  civilisation  only.  The  main  diffi- 
culty in  establishing  this  assertion  lies  in  the  fact 
that  it  is  not  quite  certain  whether  they  were 
really  brave  and  heroic  enough  to  achieve  such 
a  conquest.  As  to  the  linguistic  consideration 
which  is  the  favourite  resort  of  many  ethnologists 
it  can  be  said  that  it  is  not  more  harmful  to  the 
one  hypothesis  than  it  is  advantageous  to  the 


48  History  of  Japan 

other.  It  is  quite  needless  to  argue  that  there  is 
little  sign  of  the  existence  of  any  linguistic  affinity 
between  the  language  of  Japan  and  those  of  the 
tropical  lands,  except  in  a  few  words.  This  lack 
of  linguistic  affinity,  however,  can  be  explained 
away,  while  maintaining  the  importance  of  the 
ancient  immigrants  from  the  South,  by  consider- 
ing that  the  ancestors  of  the  ruling  class,  having 
been  inferior  as  regards  civilisation  to  the  other 
stock  or  stocks  of  people  whom  they  found  al- 
ready settled  prior  to  them  in  Japan,  and  having 
been  perhaps  inferior  in  number  also,  gradually 
lost  not  only  their  language  but  many  of  their 
racial  characteristics  as  well.  Similar  examples 
may  be  found  in  abundance  in  the  history  of 
Europe,  the  Normans  in  Sicily,  and  the  Goths  in 
Italy  being  among  the  most  conspicuous.  It  is 
not  impossible  to  suppose  the  like  process  to  have 
taken  place  in  Japan  also. 

Summing  up  what  is  stated  above,  I  cannot  but 
think  that  the  prehistoric  immigrants  into  our 
country  from  the  South  were  by  no  means  a  negli- 
gible factor  in  constituting  the  island  nation, 
though  the  majority  of  immigrants  might  have 
come  from  the  nearest  continental  shores,  and  in 
this  majority  it  is  not  necessary  to  exclude  the 
Chinese  element  altogether.  It  seems  to  me  prob- 
able that  southern  Japan,  especially  the  island 
\of  Kyushu,  was  inhabited  in  the  prehistoric  age 
Ainu,  and  by  immigrants  from  the  North 


The  Races  and  Climate  of  Japan    49 

as  well  as  from  the  South  side  by  side.  But  what 
was  the  relative  distribution  of  these  agglomerate 
races  at  a  certain  precise  date  is  now  a  question 
very  hard  to  settle  definitely. 


CHAPTER  III 

JAPAN  BEFORE  THE  INTRODUCTION  OF  BUDDHISM 
AND  CHINESE  CIVILISATION 

BEFORE  entering  into  a  description  of  the  early 
history  of  Japan,  it  may  be  of  some  service  to 
the  foreign  reader  to  learn  when  the  authentic 
history  of  Japan  begins.  Generally  it  is  not  an 
easy  matter  to  draw  a  distinct  line  of  demarcation 
between  the  historic  and  the  prehistoric  age  in 
the  history  of  any  country,  and  in  order  to  get 
rid  of  this  difficulty,  an  intermediate  age  called 
the  proto-historic  was  invented  by  modern  schol- 
ars, and  has  been  in  vogue  up  to  now.  It  is  true 
that,  by  making  use  of  this  term,  one  aim  was 
surely  attained,  but  two  difficulties  were  thereby 
created  in  lieu  of  one  dismissed.  We  were  freed, 
indeed  from  the  hard  task  of  making  a  delicate 
discrimination  between  the  historic  and  the  pre- 
historic age,  but  at  the  same  time  we  took  up  the 
burden  of  distinguishing  the  proto-historic  age 
from  both  the  historic  and  the  prehistoric!  And 
these  new  difficulties  cannot  be  said  to  be  easier  to 
meet  than  the  old,  so  that  it  may  be  doubted 
whether  it  was  wise  to  intercalate  the  proto-his- 
toric age  between  the  two,  if  the  promotion  of 

50 


Japan  Before  Buddhism         51 

scientific  exactitude  was  the  main  purpose  of  such 
an  intercalation.  A  polygon,  however  the  num- 
ber of  its  sides  be  augmented,  can  never  make  a 
circle  in  the  exact  sense.  I  shall  not,  therefore,  try 
to  adhere  scrupulously  to  the  above-mentioned 
threefold  division  in  discharging  the  task  which 
I  have  undertaken. 

Let  me  turn  then  to  the  line  of  demarcation  be- 
tween the  historic  and  the  prehistoric  age  without 
troubling  myself  about  the  proto-historic.  This 
line  must  be  drawn  by  first  making  clear  the  sig- 
nification of  the  historic  age,  and  not  by  defining 
the  term  "prehistoric."  What,  then  is  the  his- 
toric age?  It  may  be  defined  as  an  age,  the  au- 
thentic history  of  which  can,  in  a  large  measure, 
be  ascertained,  or  as  an  age  which  has  an  historical 
record,  contemporary  and  fairly  reliable.  It  is 
to  be  regretted  that  we  cannot  dispense  with  such 
precautionary  expressions  as  'to  a  large  measure1 
and  'fairly',  but  we  cannot  avoid  retaining  them, 
and  therein  lies  the  true  difficulty  of  making  an 
exact  demarcation.  Moreover,  an  age,  the  his- 
tory of  which  was  regarded  at  one  time  as  im- 
possible of  being  ascertained,  often  may  become 
ascertainable  as  the  result  of  ever-increasing  dis- 
coveries of  new  materials  as  well  as  of  the  new 
methods  of  their  deciphering.  In  other  words, 
the  demarcation,  however  conscientiously  made 
at  one  time,  is  liable  to  be  shifting,  and  the  reason 
for  the  demarcation  gradually  changes  pari  p\a\ssu. 
As  the  word  prehistoric  has  now  begun  to  be  used 


52  History  of  Japan 

independently  of  'historic',  the  historic  age  may 
be  better  defined  as  an  age  which  has  a  civilisation 
advanced  enough  to  have  a  record  of  its  own.  So 
far  a  country  may  be  said  to  be  in  an  historic  age, 
even  at  an  epoch  the  historical  sources  of  which 
are  considered  not  to  be  extant  anywhere,  only 
if  the  standard  of  civilisation  be  high  enough  for 
that.  Unless  we  adopt  this  definition,  the  line 
of  demarcation  may  shift  more  and  more  into  an- 
tiquity, as  the  result  of  ever-increasing  discoveries 
of  new  materials  as  well  as  of  the  methods  of 
their  interpretation,  and  the  demarcation  itself 
will  become  of  very  little  value.  So  far  a  country 
may  be  said  to  be  in  an  historic  age,  even  at  an 
epoch  the  historical  sources  of  which  are  consid- 
ered not  to  be  extant  anywhere.  But  how  can 
we  know  whether  a  country  has  reached  a  stage 
of  civilisation  advanced  enough  to  have  its  own 
record?  It  is  almost  impossible  to  discover  this 
point  without  resorting  to  authentic  historical 
sources.  And  in  order  that  we  may  so  resort, 
those  sources  must  be  extant.  In  this  way  if  we 
want  to  make  the  demarcation  full  of  significance, 
we  have  to  beg  the  question  ad  infinitum. 

In  the  history  of  Japan,  too,  what  is  said  above 
holds  true,  and  the  demarcation,  however  dex- 
terously made,  will  not  assist  much  in  the  study 
of  it.  Among  foreigners,  however,  the  question 
how  far  can  we  go  back  with  certainty  in  the  his- 
tory of  Japan,  is  a  very  popular  topic,  and  has 
been  discussed  with  very  keen  interest.  For  the 


Japan  Before  Buddhism         53 

sake  of  elucidation,  therefore,  I  will  give  a  short 
account  of  the  early  chronicles  concerning  the  his- 
tory of  our  country. 

Among  the  old  chronicles  of  Japan  there  are 
two  which  are  especially  conspicuous.  The  one 
is  the  Kojiki,  the  other  the  Nihongl.  It  is  gen- 
erally admitted  that  these  two  chronicles  are  the 
oldest  extant  and  the  most  substantial  of  all  the 
historical  sources  of  ancient  Japan.  The  compila- 
tion of  the  former  was  concluded  in  712  A.D. 
by  a  savant  called  Oh-no-Yasumaro,  while  that 
of  the  latter  was  undertaken  by  several  royal  his- 
toriographers, and  finished  in  720  A.D.  under  the 
auspices  of  Prince  Toneri.  That  the  compilation 
of  the  two  great  chronicles  took  place  successively 
in  the  beginning  of  the  eighth  century  is  one  of  the 
symptoms  showing  the  dawning  of  the  national 
consciousness  of  the  Japanese,  to  which  I  shall 
refer  in  the  following  chapters.  In  their  char^ 
acteristics,  these  two  chronicles  differ  somewhat 
from  each  other.  The  materials  of  the  Kojiki 
were  first  made  legible  and  compiled  by  Hieta- 
no-Are,  an  intelligent  courtier  in  the  reign  of  the 
Emperor  Temmu,  and  afterwards  revised  by  the 
aforesaid  Oh-no-Yasumaro.  Considering  that 
there  was  only  a  very  short  time  left  at  the  dis- 
posal of  Yasumaro  to  spend  in  revising  the  work 
before  dedicating  it  to  the  Empress  Gemmyo,  it 
can  be  safely  concluded  that  Yasumaro  did  not  try 
to  make  any  great  alteration,  and  the  Kojiki  re- 
mained for  the  most  part  as  it  had  been  compiled 


54  History  of  Japan 

by  Hieta-no-Are.  The  other  chronicle,  the  Ni- 
hongl,  was  finished  eight  years  after  the  Kojiki, 
and  submitted  to  the  Empress  by  Prince  Toneri, 
the  president  of  the  historiographical  commission. 
If  we  suppose  this  commission  to  be  a  continua- 
tion of  what  was  inaugurated  by  the  royal  order 
of  the  Emperor  Temmu  in  the  tenth  year  of  his 
reign,  then  the  commission  may  be  said  to  have 
taken  about  forty  years  in  compiling  the  chronicle. 
In  some  respects  the  Kojikl  may  be  regarded  as 
one  of  the  byproducts  of  the  compilation,  Hieta- 
no-Are  being  probably  one  of  the  assistants  of 
the  commission.  The  essential  difference  between 
the  two  chronicles  is  that  the  Kojikl  was  exclu- 
sively compiled  from  Japanese  sources,  written 
by  Japanese  as  well  as  by  naturalized  Koreans, 
and  retained  much  of  the  colloquial  form  of  an- 
cient Japanese  narrated  stories,  while  in  the  case 
of  the  Nihongl  many  Chinese  historical  works 
were  consulted,  and  historical  events  were  so  ar- 
ranged as  to  conform  to  what  was  stated  in  those 
Chinese  records.  Many  bon  mots,  it  is  true,  were 
often  borrowed  from  ancient  Chinese  classics,  and 
this  ornamented  and  exaggerated  style  was  often 
pursued  at  the  expense  of  historical  truth,  and  on 
that  account  most  of  the  later  historians  of  our 
country  give  less  credit  to  the  Nihongl  than  to 
the  Kojiki,  though  this  scepticism  about  the  for- 
mer is  somewhat  undeserved. 

It  is  beyond  question  that  the  two  chronicles 
mentioned  above  are  the  oldest  historical  works 


Japan  Before  Buddhism         55 

written  in  Japan,  now  extant.  They  are  not,  how- 
ever, the  earliest  attempts  at  historical  compila- 
tion in  our  country.  Just  a  hundred  years  before 
the  compilation  of  the  Nihongi  was  finished,  the 
Empress  Suiko,  in  the  twenty-eighth  year  of  her 
reign,  that  is,  in  620  A.D.  ordered  the  Crown 
Prince,  known  as  Shotoku,  and  Soga-no-Umako, 
the  most  influential  minister  in  her  court,  to  com- 
pile the  chronicles  of  the  imperial  house,  of  vari- 
ous noted  families  and  groups  of  people,  and  a 
history  of  the  country  with  its  provinces.  If  these 
chronicles  had  been  completed  and  preserved  to 
this  day,  they  would  have  been  the  oldest  we 
have.  Unfortunately,  however,  by  the  premature 
death  of  the  Crown  Prince,  the  compilation  was 
abruptly  terminated,  and  what  was  partly  accom- 
plished seems  to  have  been  kept  at  the  house  of 
Soga-no-Umako,  until  it  was  burnt  down  by  his 
son  Yemishi,  when  he  was  about  to  be  executed 
by  imperial  order  in  645  A.D.  Fragments  of  the 
archives,  it  is  said,  were  picked  up  out  of  the  blaz- 
ing fire,  but  nothing  more  was  ever  heard  of  them. 
There  is  a  version  now  called  the  Kujiki,  and 
this  has  been  misrepresented  to  be  that  very  chron- 
icle, which,  it  was  feigned,  was  not  really  lost, 
but  offered  in  an  unfinished  state  to  the  Empress 
the  next  year  after  the  death  of  prince  Shotoku. 
If  this  be  true,  the  record  which  was  burnt  must 
have  been  one  of  several  copies  of  the  incomplete 
chronicle,  which,  as  Euclid  would  say,  is  absurd! 
It  is  now  generally  agreed  that  the  chronicle  is 


56  History  of  Japan 

spurious,  though  it  may  contain  some  citations 
from  sources  originally  authentic. 

Whatever  be  the  criticism  on  the  chronicle  Ku- 
jiki,  there  is  no  doubting  the  fact  that  the  work 
of  compiling  a  history  was  initiated  in  the  reign 
of  the  Empress  Suiko,  and  partly  put  into  execu- 
tion. Not  only  that.  There  might  have  been 
many  other  chronicles  and  historical  manuscripts 
in  existence  anterior  to  the  compilation  of  the 
Nihongi,  and  afterwards  lost.  In  the  Nihorigi 
are  mentioned  the  names  of  the  books  which  were 
consulted  in  the  course  of  compilation.  Among 
them  may  be  found  the  names  of  several  sets  of 
the  annals  of  a  peninsular  state  called  Kutara, 
various  Chinese  historical  works,  and  a  history 
of  Japan  written  by  a  Korean  priest.  Some  of 
the  books  are  not  named  explicitly,  and  passages 
from  them  are  cited  as  "from  a  book"  merely, 
but  we  can  easily  perceive  that  they  were  mostly 
from  Japanese  records. 

So  far  I  have  spoken  about  chronicles  which 
were  compiled  of  set  purpose  as  a  record  of  the 
times  and  worthy  to  be  called  historical  works. 
As  to  other  kinds  of  manuscripts,  for  instance, 
various  family  records  and  fragmentary  docu- 
ments of  various  sorts,  there  might  have  been  a 
considerable  number  of  these,  and  it  is  probable 
that  they  were  utilized  by  the  compilers  of  the 
Kojiki  and  of  the  Nihongi,  though  the  latter  men- 
tions very  few  of  such  materials,  and  the  former 
is  entirely  silent  concerning  its  sources.  The 


Japan  Before  Buddhism         57 

question  then  arises  how  this  presumably  large 
number  of  manuscripts  came  to  be  formed.  We 
have  no  written  character  which  may  be  called 
truly  our  own.  All  forms  of  the  ideographs  in 
use  in  our  country  were  borrowed  from  China, 
intact  or  modified.  And  in  ancient  Japan  an  utter 
lack  of  knowledge  of  the  Chinese  characters  pre- 
vailed for  a  long  time  throughout  most  classes  of 
the  people.  If  this  were  so,  by  whom  were  those 
documents  transcribed?  In  the  reign  of  the  Em- 
peror Richu,  circa  430  A.D.,  scribes  were  posted 
in  each  province  to  prepare  archives,  a  fact  which 
implies  that  the  emperor  and  magistrates  had 
their  own  scribes  already.  Who  then  were  ap- 
pointed as  the  scribes?  To  explain  this  I  must 
turn  for  a  while  to  the  history  of  the  Korean 
peninsula  and  its  relations  with  China. 

Wu-ti,  the  most  enterprising  emperor  of  the 
Han  dynasty,  was  the  first  to  push  his  military 
exploration  into  the  Korean  peninsula,  and  from 
107  B.C.  onward  the  northern  parts  of  the  pen- 
insula were  successively  turned  into  Chinese  prov- 
inces. This  was  the  beginning  of  the  infiltration 
of  Chinese  civilisation  into  those  regions.  After- 
wards on  account  of  the  internal  disturbances  of 
the  Chinese  empire,  her  grip  on  the  conquered 
provinces  became  a  little  loosened,  but  at  the  be- 
ginning of  the  third  century  A.D.  a  strong  in- 
dependent Chinese  state  constituted  itself  on  the 
east  of  the  river  Lyao,  and  Chinese  influence 
thereby  once  more  extended  itself  vigorously  over 


58  History  of  Japan 

the  northern  half  of  the  peninsula :  a  new  prov- 
ince was  added  to  the  south.  In  the  districts 
which  had  thus  become  Chinese  provinces,  not 
only  were  governors  sent  from  China,  but  a  num- 
ber of  colonists  must  also  have  settled  there,  so 
that  through  them  Chinese  civilisation  continued 
to  infiltrate  more  and  more,  though  very  slowly, 
into  the  peninsula.  This  infiltration  lasted  till  the 
middle  of  the  fourth  century,  when  the  Chinese 
provinces  in  the  peninsula  were  overrun  and  oc- 
cupied by  the  Kokuri  or  the  Koreans  properly 
so  called,  who  came  from  the  northeast,  and  by 
this  invasion  of  the  barbarians  the  progress  of 
civilisation  in  the  peninsula  was  for  a  time  ob- 
structed. Still  there  might  have  remained  a  cer- 
tain number  of  the  descendants  of  the  older  Chi- 
nese colonists,  and  it  is  possible  that  they  still 
retained  some  vestige  of  the  civilisation  intro- 
duced by  their  ancestors.  The  history  of  the  pen- 
insula at  this  period  may  be  well  pictured  by  com- 
paring it  to  the  history  of  Britain  with  its  linger- 
ing Roman  civilisation  at  the  time  of  the  Saxon 
conquest.  It  is  just  at  the  end  of  this  period  that 
Japan  came  into  close  contact  with  the  peninsular 
peoples. 

It  is  almost  impossible  to  ascertain  from  reli- 
able sources  how  far  back  we  can  trace  our  con- 
nection with  the  peninsula.  According  to  a 
chronicle  of  Shiragi,  a  state  which  once  existed  in 
the  southeast  of  the  peninsula,  one  of  the  Japan- 
nese  invasions  of  that  state  is  dated  as  early  as 


Japan  Before  Buddhism         59 

49  B.C.  Since  the  value  of  the  chronicle  as  his- 
torical material  is  very  dubious,  it  is  dangerous  to 
put  much  faith  in  this  statement  at  present.  We 
may,  however,  venture  to  assume  that  in  the  first 
half  of  the  third  century  A.D.  the  intercourse 
between  Japan  and  Korea  became  suddenly  very 
intimate.  Japan  invaded  the  peninsula  more  fre- 
quently than  before,  and  our  emissaries  were  de- 
spatched to  the  Chinese  province  established  to 
the  north  of  it.  Nay,  not  only  that,  some  of  them 
penetrated  into  the  interior  of  China  proper,  as 
far  as  the  capital  of  Wei,  and  on  the  way  back 
seem  to  have  been  escorted  by  a  Chinese  official 
stationed  in  the  peninsular  province.  Memoirs 
by  those  Chinese  who  had  thus  opportunities  of 
peeping  into  a  corner  of  our  country,  were  incor- 
porated by  Chen-Shou,  a  Chinese  historian  at  the 
end  of  the  third  century,  in  his  general  description 
of  Japan,  a  chapter  in  the  San-kuo-chih,  which 
has  remained  to  this  day  one  of  the  most  valu- 
able sources  concerning  the  early  history  of  our 
country.  This  intercourse  between  the  peninsula 
and  Japan,  sometimes  friendly  and  sometimes 
hostile,  happened  to  be  accentuated  by  the  expe- 
dition of  the  Empress  Jingu  to  Shiragi  in  the 
middle  of  the  fourth  century.  Soon  after  this  ex- 
pedition, Chinese  civilisation,  which  had  achieved 
a  considerable  progress  during  the  long  Han 
dynasty,  began  to  flow  into  Japan,  and  effected  a 
remarkable  change  in  both  the  social  and  the 
political  life  of  our  country.  For  just  at  this  time 


60  History  of  Japan 

the  two  northern  states  of  the  peninsula,  Korea 
or  Kokhuri  and  Kutara,  advanced  rapidly  in 
their  civilisation,  so  that  a  school  to  teach  Chinese 
literature  was  founded  in  the  former,  while  in 
the  latter  a  post  was  instituted  in  the  royal  ser- 
vice for  a  man  of  letters.  And  Shiragi,  another 
state  in  the  south-eastern  part  of  the  peninsula, 
ceased  to  be  a  barrier  to  communication  between 
those  two  peninsular  states  and  Japan,  as  it  had 
been  before  the  expedition  of  the  Empress. 

Among  the  boons  conferred  by  the  introduc- 
tion of  Chinese  civilisation  through  the  intermedi- 
ation of  the  peninsular  states,  that  which  had  had 
the  most  beneficial  and  enduring  effect  was  the  use 
of  the  written  character.  It  cannot  be  said  with 
certainty  that  the  Chinese  characters  were  to- 
tally unknown  to  the  Japanese  before  the  afore- 
said expedition  of  the  Empress.  On  the  contrary, 
there  are  several  indications  from  which  we  can 
surmise  that  they  had  chances  to  catch  glimpses 
of  the  Chinese  ideographs.  It  is  beyond  the  scope 
of  probability,  however,  to  suppose  that  these 
ideographic  characters  were  used  by  the  Japanese 
themselves  at  so  early  a  period,  in  order  to  com- 
mit to  writing  whatever  might  have  pleased  them 
to  do  so.  At  the  utmost  we  cannot  go  further 
than  to  assume  that  certain  immigrants  from  the 
peninsula,  some  of  whom  probably  came  over  to 
this  country  before  the  expedition,  as  well  as  their 
descendants,  might  have  used  the  Chinese  ideo- 
graphs. Among  the  immigrants  some  may  have 


Japan  Before  Buddhism         61 

been  of  Chinese  origin  while  others  were  of  pen- 
insular origin,  but  imbued  with  Chinese  culture. 
But  even  in  these  cases  the  use  of  the  characters 
must  have  been  limited  to  recording  their  own 
family  chronicles  or  simple  business  transactions. 
It  can  be  believed,  too,  that  the  number  of  those 
who  were  acquainted  with  the  written  characters 
at  that  time  was  very  small  even  among  the  im- 
migrants themselves.  It  is  needless  to  say  that 
public  affairs  were  not  yet  committed  to  writing. 
That  up  to  the  time  of  the  expedition  the  stand- 
ard of  civilisation  in  the  peninsular  states  stood 
not  much  higher  than  that  of  Japan  may  also  ac- 
count for  the  illiteracy  which  had  continued  so 
long. 

Shortly  after  the  Empress  Jingu's  incursion 
into  Korea  the  literary  culture  of  the  peninsular 
states  rose  suddenly  to  a  higher  standard  than 
that  of  our  country,  and  enabled  them  to  send 
into  Japan  men  versed  in  writing  and  reading 
Chinese  characters.  At  the  same  time  their  im- 
migration was  encouraged  by  the  Japanese  em- 
perors, and  some  of  the  literati  were  enlisted  into 
the  imperial  service.  As  Japan  had  at  that  time 
a  quasi-caste  system,  everybody  pursuing  the  pro- 
fession which  he  had  inherited  from  his  forefath- 
ers, and  people  belonging  to  the  same  profession 
forming  a  group  by  themselves,  several  groups 
were  thus  formed,  which  made  reading  and  writ- 
ing their  exclusive  profession.  Almost  all  the 
scribes  appointed  in  the  reign  of  the  Emperor 


62  History  of  Japan 

Richu  must  have  belonged  to  one  of  the  families 
in  those  groups.  As  a  matter  of  course  mem- 
bers of  the  imperial  family  and  those  belonging 
to  the  aristocracy  began  in  process  of  time  to  be 
initiated  in  the  elements  of  Chinese  literature; 
but  still,  writing,  as  a  business,  continued  to  be 
entrusted  to  the  members  of  the  groups  of  the 
penman's  craft,  and  they,  too,  rejoiced  in  mono- 
polising posts  and  professions  which  could  not 
dispense  with  writing,  as  secretaries,  councillors, 
notaries,  and  ambassadors  to  foreign  countries, 
and  the  like.  Naturally  chroniclers  and  historians 
were  to  be  found  solely  among  them,  an'd  there 
remains  little  doubt  that  far  the  greater  part  of 
the  historical  manuscripts  consulted  by  the  com- 
pilers of  the  Nihongi  were  written  by  those  pro- 
fessional scribes. 

It  is  not  much  to  be  wondered  at  that  the  art 
of  writing  was  entrusted  to  certain  groups  of 
people,  while  the  dominant  class  in  general  re- 
mained illiterate.  What  is  most  strange  is  that 
such  a  condition  could  continue  for  a  very  long 
time  in  our  country,  the  learned  groups,  who  had, 
in  their  hands,  the  key  of  public  and  private  busi- 
ness, being  subjected  to  the  rule  of  the  illiterate. 
Could  it  not  be  explained  by  supposing  that  the 
ruling  class  of  ancient  Japan,  though  destitute  of 
book  education,  yet  was  endowed  with  natural 
abilities,  which  were  more  than  enough  to  cope 
with  the  literary  culture  of  that  time?  If  other- 
wise, then  their  prestige  should  have  been  easily 


Japan  Before  Buddhism         63 

shaken  by  the  class  of  literati  within  a  short  in- 
terval. It  is  to  be  regretted  that  we  have  very 
few  sources  to  prove  positively  the  ability  and 
attainments  peculiar  to  the  Japanese  of  that  time, 
but  this  long  continuance  of  the  illiteracy  of  the 
ruling  class  may  serve  as  a  negative  proof,  that 
at  least  the  ruling  class  was  a  gifted  people,  more 
gifted  than  was  to  be  surmised  from  their  illiter- 
acy. 

Here  the  reader  would  perhaps  ask,  must  the 
condition  of  ancient  Japan  remain  shrouded  in 
mystery  forever?  Will  it  be  utterly  impossible 
to  know  something  positive  about  it?  On  the  con- 
trary, however  vague,  uncertain,  and  incredible 
legends  and  sources  concerning  them  may  be,  still 
we  may  extract  some  positive  knowledge  from  our 
scanty  and  often  questionable  materials,  so  as 
to  obviate  the  necessity  of  groping  hopelessly  in 
the  dark.  That  the  ancient  Japanese  were  averse 
from  any  kind  of  pollution,  physical  as  well  as 
mental,  can  be  unmistakably  perceived,  evidence 
being  too  prevalent  in  numerous  legends,  and  it 
can  also  be  attested  by  many  manners  and  cus- 
toms preserved  until  the  later  ages.  This  is  the 
real  essence  of  future  Shintoism.  About  the  rite 
of  the  misogi,  or  bathing,  I  have  already  spoken 
in  the  foregoing  chapter.  Wanting  literary  edu- 
cation, they  did  not  know  what  hypocrisy  was,  and 
were  quite  ignorant  of  the  art  of  sophistication. 
Being  utterly  naive,  it  was  not  uncommon  that 
they  erred  in  judgment.  But  once  aware  of  their 


64  History  of  Japan 

fault,  they  could  not  help  going  to  lustrate  them- 
selves and  make  atonement,  in  order  to  get  rid  of 
sin.  Warlike  and  superbly  valiant,  they  were  very 
far  from  being  vindictive.  Traits  of  cruelty  are 
hardly  to  be  found  in  the  mythological  and  legen- 
dary narratives.  The  ancient  Japanese  were,  we 
have  good  reason  to  believe,  more  humorous  than 
the  modern  Japanese. 

The  description  of  Japan  in  the  San-kuo-chih 
furnishes  many  interesting  data  besides  what  I 
have  stated  above.  We  learn  from  it  that  our 
ancestors  were  not  in  the  least  litigious,  and 
thieves  were  rare.  Transgressors  of  the  law 
were  punished  with  confiscation  of  wives  and 
children.  In  case  of  the  more  serious  crimes, 
not  only  the  criminal  but  his  dependents  also  were 
subjected  to  severe  penalties.  Women  were  noted 
for  their  chastity.  Elders  were  respected,  and  in- 
stances of  longevity  sometimes  reckoning  a 
hundred  years  of  age  were  not  rare.  Augury  was 
implicitly  believed  in,  and  when  people  were  at 
a  loss  how  to  decide  in  public  affairs  as  well  as 
in  private,  they  used  to  set  fire  to  the  shoulder 
bone  of  a  deer,  and  by  the  cleavage  thereby  pro- 
duced, divined  the  will  of  the  deities.  When  they 
had  to  set  out  for  a  long  voyage,  they  accom- 
panied a  man,  who  took  upon  himself  the  whole 
responsibility  for  the  safety  of  the  voyage  and 
the  health  of  all  on  board,  by  subjecting  himself 
to  a  hard  discipline,  and  leading  a  very  ascetic 
life.  If  any  of  the  crew  fell  ill,  or  the  tran- 


Japan  Before  Buddhism         65 

quillity  of  the  voyage  was  disturbed,  he  was  called 
on  to  put  his  life  at  stake.  Periodical  markets 
used  to  be  opened  in  several  provinces,  where  com- 
modities were  exchanged.  Tribute  was  paid  by 
the  people  in  kind.  Cattle  and  horses  were  rarely 
to  be  seen.  Though  iron  was  known  in  making 
weapons,  yet  arms  made  of  other  materials  such 
as  bone,  bamboo,  flint,  and  so  forth  were  still 
to  be  found  in  use  here  and  there. 

Such  was  the  state  of  our  country  as  witnessed 
by  Chinese  visitors  in  the  first  half  of  the  third 
century  A.D.  Their  observations  might  not  have 
been  very  accurate,  but  they  strangely  coincide  in 
general  with  conclusions  which  could  be  drawn 
from  Japanese  sources.  The  author  of  the  San- 
kuo-chih,  moreover,  says  that  there  was  a  great 
resemblance  in  manners  and  customs  between 
Japan  and  the  island  of  Hai-nan  on  the  southern 
coast  of  China.  This  assertion  may  be  highly  sug- 
gestive as  to  the  ethnological  study  of  Japan.  An 
ancient  custom  of  Japan  called  kugatachi,  a  kind 
of  ordeal  to  prove  one's  innocence  by  dipping  a 
hand  into  boiling  water  and  taking  out  some  ar- 
ticle therefrom  unhurt,  is  said  to  have  been  prac- 
tised by  the  people  of  Hai-nan  too.  To  believe 
hastily,  however,  in  a  racial  connection  between 
the  Japanese  and  the  inhabitants  of  Hai-nan  is  a 
very  dangerous  matter.  Another  fact  that  can- 
not be  overlooked  in  the  Chinese  narratives  is  a 
passage  concerning  the  continual  warfare  in 


66  History  of  Japan 

Japan,  though  only  a  short  description  of  it  is 
given  in  them. 

In  the  preceding  chapter  I  have  spoken  about 
the  heterogeneity  of  the  Japanese  as  a  race. 
Among  the  various  racial  factors,  however,  none 
was  able  to  keep  for  a  long  time  its  racial  in- 
dependence and  separateness  from  the  bulk  of  the 
Japanese  except  the  Ainu.  Other  minor  factors 
were  lost  in  the  chaotic  concourse  of  races  or 
swallowed  up  in  the  midst  of  the  most  powerful 
element.  Even  the  Kumaso,  who  were  once  the 
strongest  element  in  the  island  of  Kyushu,  suc- 
cumbed to  the  arms  of  the  Japanese  not  long  after 
the  peninsular  expedition  of  the  Empress  Jingu. 
The  Ainu,  too,  intermingled  with  the  dominant 
race  wherever  circumstances  were  favourable  to 
such  a  union.  Having  been  the  predecessors  of 
the  Japanese,  however,  in  the  order  of  settling  in 
this  country,  and  having  moreover  been  the  next 
most  powerful  race  to  it,  the  Ainu  only  have  been 
able  to  retain  their  racial  entity,  though  continu- 
ously decreasing  in  numbers,  up  to  the  present 
time. 

In  the  long  history  of  the  antagonism  between 
the  Japanese  and  the  Ainu,  which  covers  more 
than  a  thousand  years,  the  Ainu  were  on  the 
whole  the  losing  party,  retreating  before  the 
Japanese.  Surely,  however,  they  must  have  made 
a  stubborn  resistance  now  and  then.  That  they 
formerly  occupied  the  island  of  Kyushu,  we  know 
from  the  archaeological  remains.  But,  from  re- 


Japan  Before  Buddhism         67 

liable  historical  records,  we  cannot  know  anything 
certain  about  the  race,  until  the  time  when  they 
are  to  be  found  fighting  against  the  Japanese  in 
the  northern  part  of  Hon-to.  Still  it  is  beyond 
doubt,  that  there  must  have  been  not  a  few  in- 
tervening phases,  and  one  of  the  phases,  which 
is  important,  coincides  with  the  period  when  the 
visit  of  the  Chinese  officials  took  place. 

Most  of  the  countries  of  the  world  may  be 
divided  into  two  or  more  parts,  the  people  of  each 
of  which  differ  from  those  of  the  others  in  mental 
and  physical  traits.  Boundary  lines  in  this  case 
generally  conform  to  the  geographical  features 
of  the  land,  but  not  necessarily  so  always.  If  we 
nave  to  draw  lines  dividing  the  island  of  Hon-to 
in  accordance  with  linguistic  considerations,  it  is 
more  natural  to  divide  it  first  into  two  rather  than 
into  three  or  more  parts,  and  the  dividing  line  here 
is  not  the  most  conspicuous  geographical  boun- 
dary. The  line  begins  on  the  north  at  a  spot  near 
Nutari,  on  the  Sea  of  Japan,  a  little  eastward 
of  the  city  of  Niigata  in  the  province  of  Yechigo, 
and  after  running  vertically  southward,  on  the 
whole  keeping  to  the  meridian  of  139°  1/3  E. 
till  it  reaches  the  southern  boundary  of  the  prov- 
ince, it  turns  abruptly  to  the  west  along  the  boun- 
dary between  Yechigo  and  Shinano,  which  lies 
nearly  on  the  latitude  36°  5/6  N. ;  and  then  it 
runs  again  toward  the  south  along  the  western 
boundary  of  the  provinces  Shinano  and  Totomi, 
which  is  almost  identical  with  the  meridian  137° 


68  History  of  Japan 

*/2  E.  This  is  of  course  an  average  line  drawn 
from  several  linguistic  considerations,  such  as 
accentuation,  dialectic  peculiarities  and  the  like, 
but  at  the  same  time,  besides  the  linguistic  differ- 
ences there  are  other  kinds  noticeable  on  both 
sides  of  the  line.  It  would  not  therefore  be  very 
wide  of  the  mark,  if  we  adopt  this  line  as  a  boun- 
dary dividing  Hon-to  with  regard  to  the  difference 
in  the  standard  of  the  civilisation  in  general.  No 
other  line  drawn  on  the  map  of  Japan  can  divide 
it  in  such  a  way  as  to  make  one  part  so  distinctly 
different  from  the  other.  If  the  reader  will 
glance  at  the  map,  he  can  easily  see  that  the  line 
does  not  well  agree  with  the  geographical  fea- 
tures, especially  in  those  parts  running  vertically 
southward.  No  insurmountable  natural  barrier 
can  be  found,  particularly  on  the  Pacific  coast. 
Consequently  the  best  interpretation  of  the  boun- 
dary line  must  come  not  from  geography,  but 
from  history. 

Not  only  in  the  case  of  Japan,  but  in  Western 
countries  too,  broad  rivers  or  big  mountain  chains 
do  not  necessarily  form  the  lines  of  internal  and 
external  division.  The  great  Balkan  range  could 
not  hinder  the  Bulgarians  of  East  Roumelia  from 
uniting  with  their  brethren  to  the  north  of  the 
mountain.  The  Rhine,  the  most  historic  river  in 
the  world,  has  never  in  reality  been  made  a  boun- 
dary between  France  and  Germany  which  could 
last  for  long,  and  the  antagonism  of  the  two  coun- 
tries, which  has  continued  for  many  centuries,  is 


Japan  Before  Buddhism         69 

the  result  of  the  earnest  but  hardly  realisable  de- 
sire on  both  sides  to  make  the  river  a  perpetual 
boundary.  More  than  that,  even  inside  Germany 
the  Rhine  joins  rather  than  divides  the  regions  on 
both  sides  of  it. 

Take  again  for  example  the  boundary  between 
England  and  Scotland.  If  we  follow  merely  the 
geographical  conditions,  we  may  shift  the  boun- 
dary line  a  little  northward,  or  perhaps  south- 
ward too,  with  better  or  at  least  equal  reason.  In 
order  to  account  for  the  present  boundary,  we 
cannot  but  look  back  into  the  history  of  the  dis- 
trict, from  the  age  of  the  Picts  and  Britons  down- 
ward. If  it  had  been  a  dividing  line  of  shorter 
duration  dating  only  from  the  Middle  Ages,  it 
would  not  have  been  able  to  maintain  itself  so 
long,  and  the  differences  of  not  only  dialects  but 
of  temperament  and  various  mental  characteris- 
tics would  not  have  been  so  decisive. 

We  have  no  Picts-wall,  no  limes  in  our  country, 
but  the  boundary  line  delineated  above  divides 
Japan  into  two  parts,  the  one  different  from  the 
other  in  various  ways,  more  remarkably  than, 
could  be  effected  by  drawing  any  other  boundary 
line  elsewhere.  Then  where  lies  the  reason  which 
makes  the  Ainu  line  so  significant?  It  must  be 
attributed  to  the  fact  that  the  line  stood  for 
many  centuries  as  a  frontier  of  the  Japanese 
against  the  Ainu.  In  other  words,  the  Ainu  must 
have  made  the  most  stubborn  resistance  on  this 
line  against  the  advancing  Japanese.  Japan  had 


7O  History  of  Japan 

to  become  organised  and  consolidated  in  a  great 
measure,  so  as  to  be  called  a  well-defined  entity, 
before  the  Japanese  could  penetrate  beyond  the 
line  to  the  east  and  north.  The  exploration  of 
Northern  Japan  is  the  result  of  this  penetration 
and  of  the  infiltration  of  the  civilisation  which  had 
come  into  being  in  the  already  compact  south. 
Thus  the  difference  between  the  two  parts  grew 
to  be  a  clearly  perceptible  one.  In  some  respects 
it  can  be  well  compared  to  the  difference  between 
Cape  Colony  and  the  two  states,  the  Transvaal 
and  the  Orange  Free  State,  which  were  formed 
by  the  emigrants  from  the  former. 

The  fortress  of  Nutari  had  been  for  a  long 
time  the  outpost  of  the  Japanese  against  the  Ainu 
on  the  side  of  the  Sea  of  Japan.  With  this  fort- 
ress as  a  pivot  the  boundary  line  gradually  turned 
toward  the  north,  pushed  forward  by  the  arms 
of  the  Japanese.  The  movement  must  have  been 
made  at  a  very  unequal  pace  in  different  ages,  and 
where  the  progress  was  very  slow  or  stopped 
short  and  could  not  go  on  for  a  long  time,  there 
we  may  draw  another  boundary  line,  thus  mark- 
ing several  successive  stages.  Politically  to  efface 
the  significance  of  these  lines  was  thought  to  be 
necesary  for  the  unification  of  the  Empire  by  the 
Emperors  and  their  ministers  in  successive  ages, 
and  in  that  respect  more  than  enough  has  been 
achieved  by  them.  Apart  from  political  consider- 
ations, however,  those  lines,  which  mark  the 
boundaries  in  successive  phases,  are  almost  per- 


Japan  Before  Buddhism         71 

ceptible  to  this  day.  And  none  of  those  lines  is 
so  full  of  meaning  as  the  one  which  I  have  em- 
phasised above.  At  first  sight  it  would  seem 
strange  that  while  the  fortress  of  Nutari  re- 
mained stationary  as  an  outpost  for  a  very  long 
time,  there  cannot  be  found  any  corresponding 
spot  on  the  Pacific  side  east  of  the  line.  But  the 
difficulty  may  be  cleared  away  easily,  if  one  thinks 
of  the  fact  that  the  line  was  moved  on  more 
swiftly  to  the  right  than  to  the  left  where  the  fort 
Nutari  was  situated. 

In  the  first  half  of  the  third  century  after 
Christ  the  Japanese  were  still  fighting  on  the  line 
against  the  Ainu.  And  the  time  when  the  Chinese 
officials  came  over  to  this  country  falls  in  the  same 
period.  In  the  description  given  in  the  San-kuo- 
chih  the  names  of  about  thirty  provinces  under  the 
suzerainty  of  the  court  of  Yamato  are  mentioned, 
to  identify  all  of  which  with  modern  names  is  a 
very  difficult  and  practically  a  hopeless  task.  But 
this  much  is  certain,  that  none  of  them  could  have 
denoted  a  province  east  of  the  line.  Moreover, 
we  can  tell  from  a  passage  in  the  same  work  that 
the  war  with  the  Ainu  at  that  time  had  been  a 
very  serious  one  for  our  ancestors,  for  it  is  stated 
that  the  course  of  the  war  was  reported  to  the 
Chinese  official  stationed  in  the  peninsular  prov- 
ince by  the  Japanese  ambassador  despatched 
there. 

Turning  to  the  southwestern  part  of  Japan,  it 
cannot  be  said  that  the  whole  island  of  Kyushu 


72  History  of  Japan 

was  already  at  the  disposal  of  the  Emperor  of 
that  time.  In  the  region  which  roughly  corres- 
ponds with  the  province  of  Higo,  a  tribe  called 
the  Kumaso  defied  the  imperial  power,  and  con- 
tinued to  do  so  to  an  age  later  than  the  period 
of  which  I  have  just  spoken.  It  was  perhaps  not 
earlier  than  the  middle  of  the  fourth  century  that 
their  resistance  was  finally  broken.  South  of  the 
Kumaso,  there  lived  another  tribe  called  the  Haito 
in  the  district  afterwards  known  as  the  province  of 
Satsuma.  Some  of  the  tribesmen  were  wont  to 
serve  as  warriors  in  the  army  of  the  Emperor 
from  very  early  times,  especially  in  the  imperial 
bodyguard.  Still  the  imperial  sway  could  not 
easily  be  extended  to  their  home.  The  last  in- 
surrection of  the  Haito  tribe  is  recorded  to  have 
happened  at  the  end  of  the  seventh  century.  That 
these  southern  tribes  were  subdued  more  easily 
than  the  Ainu  on  the  north,  may  be  attributed  to 
the  fact  that  their  numbers  were  comparatively 
small,  and  that  they  might  have  been  more  akin 
in  blood  to  the  important  element  of  the  Japanese 
race  than  the  Ainu  were. 


CHAPTER  IV 

GROWTH  OF  THE  IMPERIAL  POWER 
GRADUAL  CENTRALISATION 

IT  is  a  privilege  of  historians  to  look  back.  By 
looking  back  I  do  not  mean  judging  the  past  from 
the  standpoint  of  the  present.  Though  it  is  quite 
obvious  that  past  things  should  be  valued  first  by 
the  standards  of  the  age  contemporaneous  with 
the  things  to  be  valued,  it  would  be  a  great  mis- 
take, if  we  supposed  that  the  duty  of  historians 
was  fulfilled  when  they  could  depict  the  past  as  it 
was  seen  by  its  contemporaries.  Historians  are 
by  no  means  bound  to  adhere  to  the  opinions  of 
the  ancients  in  judging  of  what  happened  in  the 
past.  How  a  past  thing  was  viewed  and  valued  by 
its  contemporary  is  in  itself  an  important  histor- 
ical fact,  which  must  be  subjected  to  the  criticism 
of  historians.  Not  only  to  have  a  clear  idea  of  the 
views  held  by  the  people  of  a  certain  period  as 
regards  contemporaneous  events,  a  task  which  is 
not  hopelessly  difficult  though  not  very  easy,  But 
also  to  know  why  such  and  such  views  happened 
to  be  held  by  those  people  at  that  time,  is  a  duty 
far  more  important  and  difficult  to  discharge. 
Historians  ought,  besides,  to  make  clear  the  abso- 

73 


74  History  of  Japan 

lute  value  of  such  views  and  the  effects  of  them 
on  the  age  in  question  as  well  as  on  the  period 
that  followed.  However  necessary  it  may  be  to 
be  acquainted  with  the  thoughts  and  beliefs  of 
former  generations,  it  is  not  indeed  incumbent 
upon  us  to  believe  blindly  what  was  believed  in 
the  past  and  to  think  on  the  same  lines  as  was 
thought  by  the  ancients.  Who  would  not  laugh 
at  our  folly,  for  example,  if  we  should  consider 
the  whale  of  old  times  to  have  been  a  kind  of  fish, 
simply  because  the  ancients  did  not  know  it  to  be 
a  species  of  mammalia,  though  by  such  a  suppo- 
sition we  might  perhaps  be  very  loyal  to  the  old 
beliefs?  As  the  result  of  investigations  over  long 
years,  many  things  that  have  been  held  to  be  to- 
tally different  by  ancient  peoples  have  been  found 
to  be  similar  to  one  another,  nay,  sometimes  just 
the  same.  On  the  other  hand,  there  have  not 
been  wanting  examples  in  which  essential  differ- 
ences, though  considerable  in  reality,  have  been 
overlooked  or  thought  to  be  negligible,  and  first 
discerned  only  after  the  researches  of  hundreds  of 
years.  In  uncivilised  times,  generally  speaking, 
men  were  rather  quick  to  observe  outward  and 
superficial  distinctions,  while  very  slow  to  discover 
internal  and  essential  variations.  There  was  a 
time  in  the  far-off  days  of  yore,  both  in  the  East 
and  in  the  West,  when  some  people  held  them- 
selves to  be  unique  and  chosen,  and  regarded 
others,  who  were  apparently  not  as  they  were  and 
spoke  languages  different  from  their  own,  to  be 


Growth  of  the  Imperial  Power      75 

decidedly  inferior  in  civilisation  to  themselves,  or 
to  be  more  akin  to  beasts  than  to  human  beings. 
Were  the  Japanese  then  at  the  beginning  of  their 
history  different  from  other  peoples  at  a  similar 
stage  of  development,  or  were  they  unique  from 
the  first?  To  give  too  definite  an  answer  to  such 
a  question  is  always  a  mistake.  Our  forefathers 
were  certainly  different  from  other  peoples  in  cer- 
tain respects,  but  they  had  much  in  common  with 
others  too.  To  be  unique  is  very  interesting  to 
look  at,  but  it  does  not  follow  necessarily  that 
what  is  unique  is  always  worthy  of  admiration. 
Uniqueness  is  an  honour  to  the  possessor  of  that 
quality  only  when  he  is  inimitably  excellent  on 
that  account.  On  the  other  hand,  to  possess  much 
of  what  is  common  to  many  is  far  from  being  a 
disgrace.  Among  things  which  are  not  unique  at 
all  may  be  found  those  which  have  universal  valid- 
ity, and  are  by  no  means  to  be  despised  as  com- 
monplace. Our  forefathers  had  not  a  few  pre- 
cious things  which  were  singular  to  themselves, 
but  at  the  same  time  they  had  much  in  common 
with  outsiders  too,  and  by  that  possession  of  com- 
mon valuables,  the  history  of  Japan  may  rank 
among  those  of  civilised  nations,  being  not  only 
interesting  but  also  instructive. 

By  the  Japanese  of  later  ages  it  was  supposed 
that  all  people  outside  historic  Japan  were  radi- 
cally different  from  themselves,  thus  forgetting 
that  their  own  ancestors  had  been  of  mixed  blood. 
This  proves,  by  the  way,  how  easily  the  process 


76  History  of  Japan 

of  amalgamation  and  assimilation  of  different 
races  was  accomplished  in  ancient  Japan.  There 
was  hardly  a  tinge  of  racial  antipathy  among  our 
forefathers  of  old.  Parallel  with  the  sense  of 
discrimination  against  other  people,  which  must 
have  been  founded  on  the  perception  of  superficial 
differences  and  on  that  account  not  deep-rooted, 
there  prevailed  among  them  an  ardent  love  for 
all  sorts  of  things  foreign,  and  they  extended  a 
hearty  welcome  to  all  the  successive  immigrants 
into  Japan,  from  whatever  quarter  of  the  world 
they  might  come.  Far  from  being  maltreated, 
these  immigrants  were  not  only  allowed  to  pur- 
sue their  favourite  occupations  of  livelihood,  but 
were  even  entrusted  with  several  important  posts 
in  the  government  and  in  the  Imperial  Household. 
Our  forefathers  did  not  hesitate,  too,  to  import 
sundry  foreign,  especially  Chinese,  customs  and 
institutions,  with  or  without  alteration.  Such 
spontaneous  importation  readily  accomplished, 
evidently  implies  that  Japan  was  considered  by 
the  ancient  Japanese  to  have  had  much  in  common 
with  China,  so  that  the  same  ways  of  living  might 
be  followed,  and  similar  legislation  might  be  put 
into  practice  here  as  well  as  there.  More  than 
that.  Our  ancestors  naively  believed  themselves 
able  to  see  the  same  effects  produced  by  the  same 
legislation  here  as  in  China,  like  ignorant  farmers, 
who  sometimes  foolishly  expect  to  be  able  to  reap 
the  same  harvests  by  sowing  the  same  kinds  of 
seed,  forgetting  the  differences  in  the  nature  of 


Growth  of  the  Imperial  Power      77 

the  soil.  So  eager  were  they  to  transplant  every- 
thing foreign  into  Japan.  At  the  present  time, 
there  are  similarly  many  who  think  that  things 
foreign  can  be  planted  in  this  country  so  as  to  bear 
the  same  fruit  as  in  their  original  homes,  and  who 
therefore  would  try  to  import  as  many  as  pos- 
sible. The  only  difference  between  them  and  the 
ancient  Japanese  lies  in  the  fact  that  their  prefer- 
ences are  for  things  European  instead  of  things 
Chinese.  Now-a-days  the  Japanese  are  frequently 
described  as  a  people  who  entertain  an  inveterate 
antagonism  to  foreigners.  Can  such  an  opinion 
hold  ground  in  the  face  of  the  indisputable  evi- 
dence of  Japan's  importation  of  so  many  foreign 
things,  material  as  well  as  spiritual? 

Returning  to  the  point,  did  Japan  become  a 
country  resembling  China,  as  was  wished  by  the 
Sinophil  Japanese  of  old  times?  On  the  contrary, 
the  uniqueness,  which  lay  at  the  foundation  of 
the  political  and  social  life  of  our  country,  was 
not  thereby  much  impaired.  Even  now  it  is  clear 
to  everybody  that  Japan  is  not  behind  any  other 
country  in  possessing  what  is  unique.  It  must 
be  borne  in  mind,  however,  that  what  the  ancient 
Japanese  thought  to  be  sufficient  to  distinguish 
themselves  from  other  people  was  not  the  same 
as  that  which  makes  the  modern  Japanese  think 
their  country  to  be  unique.  At  the  same  time  it 
can  be  said  that  ancient  Japan,  while  unique  in 
some  respects,  was  in  a  similar  condition,  social 
and  political,  as  other  countries  were  at  a  similar 


78  History  of  Japan 

stage  of  their  civilisation.  What,  then,  was  the 
state  of  Japan  in  the  beginning  of  her  history? 
It  is  this  which  I  am  going  to  describe. 

In  a  foregoing  chapter  I  stated  that  the  Japan- 
ese, whatever  ethnological  interpretation  be  given 
to  them,  can  hardly  be  considered  as  autochthons. 
Most  probably  the  greater  part  of  them  was  de- 
scended from  immigrants;  in  other  words,  their 
forefathers  were  the  conquerors  of  the  land. 
What  then  was  the  chief  occupation  of  these  con- 
querors? To  this  question  various  answers  have 
been  already  given  by  different  historians.  Some 
hold  that  argiculture  was  the  main  occupation  to 
which  our  ancestors  looked  for  a  living,  while 
others  maintain  that  they  chiefly  depended  for 
subsistence  on  more  unsettled  sorts  of  occupation, 
that  is,  on  hunting  or  fishing.  All  that  can  be 
ascertained  is  that  the  forefathers  of  the  Japanese 
did  not  leadj  at  least  in  this  country,  a  nomadic 
life,  so  that  both  cattle  and  horses  were  rare  or 
almost  unheard  of  in  very  ancient  times.  It  is 
very  probable,  too,  that  in  whatever  occupation 
the  original  Japanese  might  have  been  chiefly  en- 
gaged, they  must  have  been  also  acquainted  with 
the  elements  of  agriculture  at  the  same  time.  No 
reliable  evidence,  however,  can  be  found  to  an- 
swer this  question.  In  this  respect  the  certitude 
of  the  early  history  of  Japan  falls  far  short  of 
that  of  the  German  tribes,  which,  though  not  civil- 
ised enough  to  have  left  records  of  their  own, 
were  yet  fortunate  enough  to  be  described  by 


Growth  of  the  Imperial  Power      79 

writers  of  more  civilised  races,  especially  by  the 
Romans.  Early  Japan  seems  not  to  have  had  as 
intimate  an  intercourse  with  China  as  the  early 
Germans  had  with  Rome,  so  that  we  have  great 
difficulty  in  ascertaining  any  details  about  social 
and  political  conditions  as  well  as  the  modes  of 
life  of  the  ancient  Japanese,  in  the  same  way  as 
that  in  which  we  are  acquainted  with  the  early 
land-system  of  the  Germans,  their  methods  of 
fighting,  and  so  forth.  As  to  the  land-system  of 
early  Japan,  almost  nothing  is  known  about  it  un- 
til the  introduction  of  the  Chinese  land-distribu- 
tion procedure  in  the  first  half  of  the  seventh 
century.  We  cannot  ascertain  whether  there  was 
anything  which  might  be  compared  with  the  early 
land-system  of  the  Teutons.  The  introduction  of 
the  elaborate  organisation  of  the  T'ang  dynasty 
into  our  country  may  be  interpreted  in  two  ways. 
It  may  be  assumed  that  a  land-distribution  similar 
to  that  of  the  Chinese  had  already  existed  in 
Japan,  and  that  this  facilitated  the  introduction  of 
the  foreign  methods,  which  were  of  the  same 
type  but  more  highly  developed,  or  we  may  deny 
the  previous  existence  of  any  such  arrangement  in 
our  country,  reasoning  from  the  fact  that  the 
newly  introduced  foreign  system  could  not  take 
deep  root  in  our  country  on  account  of  its  incom- 
patibility with  native  traditions.  What,  however, 
we  can  state  with  some  degree  of  certainty  con- 
cerning the  early  history  of  Japan,  prior  to  the 
introduction  of  Chinese  institutions,  is  that  the 


8o  History  of  Japan 

people,  or  rather  groups  of  people,  figured  in  the 
social  system  as  objects  of  possession  quite  as 
much  as  did  landed  property. 

The  land  of  Japan,  so  far  as  it  had  been  con- 
quered and  explored  by  our  forefathers  up  to  the 
Revolution  of  the  Taikwa  era  in  the  first  half  of 
the  seventh  century,  consisted  of  the  imperial  do- 
mains and  the  private  properties  held  by  subjects 
by  the  same  right  as  that  by  which  the  emperor 
held  his  domains.  In  other  words,  the  relation  of 
the  emperor  with  his  subjects  was  not  through 
lands  granted  to  the  latter  by  the  former,  but 
was  a  personal  relation.  The  idea  of  vassalage 
due  to  the  holding  of  crown  lands  seems  not  to 
have  been  entertained  by  the  early  Japanese. 
From  the  point  of  view  of  the  free  rights  of  the 
landholders,  ancient  Japan  resembles  early  Ger- 
man society.  Only  the  way  which  the  tenant  took 
possession  of  his  land  can  not  be  ascertained  so 
definitely  as  in  the  case  of  allod-holding  in  Europe. 
There  is  no  doubt,  however,  that  not  only  land 
but  persons  also  formed  the  most  important 
private  properties.  Needless  to  say,  people  who 
dwelt  on  private  land  were  ipso  facto  the  property 
of  the  landowner.  Without  any  regard  to  land 
a  seigneur  of  early  Japan  could  own  a  certain  num- 
ber of  persons,  and  in  that  case  the  land  inhabited 
by  them  naturally  became  the  property  of  their 
master. 

The  Emperor,  who  was  the  greatest  seigneur 
as  the  owner  of  vast  domains  and  of  a  large  num- 


Growth  of  the  Imperial  Power      81 

her  of  persons,  ruled  at  the  same  time  over  many 
other  seigneurs,  the  big  freeholders  of  land  and 
serf.  It  may  be  supposed  also  that  there  might 
have  been  many  minor  freemen  besides,  who  were 
not  rich  enough  to  possess  sufficient  serfs  to  cul- 
tivate their  grounds  for  them  and,  therefore,  were 
obliged  to  support  themselves  by  their  own  toil. 
Nothing  positive  is  known,  however,  about  them, 
if  they  ever  really  existed.  The  right  of  a 
seigneur  over  his  clients  was  almost  absolute,  even 
the  lives  and  chattels  of  his  clients  being  at  his 
his  disposal,  though  the  seingeur  himself  lay  under 
the  jurisdiction  of  the  Emperor.  Some  of  the 
seigneurs  were  men  of  the  same  race  as  the  im- 
perial family,  their  ancestors  having  helped  in  the 
conquest  of  the  country.  Others  were  scions  of 
the  imperial  family  itself.  It  is  very  probable, 
nevertheless,  that  no  insignificant  portion  of  this 
seigneur  class  was  of  a  blood  different  from  that 
of  the  imperial  family,  having  sprung  from  the 
aboriginal  race,  or  from  immigrants  other  than 
the  stock  to  which  the  imperial  family  belonged. 

The  extent  of  the  land  over  which  a  seigneur 
held  sway,  was  in  general  not  very  great,  so  that 
it  cannot  be  fairly  compared  with  any  modern 
Japanese  province  or  kuni.  Side  by  side  with 
these  seigneurs  who  were  lords  of  their  lands, 
there  was  another  class  of  seigneurs,  who  were 
conspicuous,  not,  strictly  speaking,  on  account  of 
the  land  which  they  de  facto  possessed,  but  on 
account  of  their  being  chieftains  of  certain  groups 


82  History  of  Japan 

of  people.  Some  of  these  groups  were  formed 
by  men  pursuing  the  same  occupation.  Groups 
thus  formed  were  those  of  fletchers,  shield-mak- 
ers, jewellers,  mirror-makers,  potters,  and  so 
forth.  Performers  of  religious  rites,  fighting- 
men,  and  scribes,  too,  were  grouped  in  this  class. 
It  must  be  especially  noticed  that  groups  of  men- 
at-arms  and  of  scribes  contained  a  good  many 
foreign  elements,  far  more  distinctly  than  other 
groups.  Scribes,  though  their  profession  as  a 
craft  was  of  a  higher  and  more  important  nature 
than  others,  were,  as  was  explained  in  the  last 
chapter,  exclusively  of  foreign  blood.  On  account 
of  this  there  was  more  than  one  set  of  such  immi- 
grants, and  we  had  in  Japan  several  groups  of 
scribes.  As  to  soldiers  or  men-at-arms,  those  who 
served  in  the  first  stage  of  the  conquest  of  this 
country  must  have  been  of  the  same  stock  as  the 
conquering  race.  Later  on,  however,  quite  a  num- 
ber of  men  who  were  not  properly  to  be  called 
Japanese,  as,  for  example,  the  Ainu  and  the  Haito, 
began  to  be  enlisted  into  the  service  of  the  Em- 
peror, and  notwithstanding  their  difference  in 
blood  from  that  of  the  predominant  stock,  their 
fidelity  to  the  Emperor  was  almost  incomparable, 
and  furnished  many  subjects  for  our  old  martial 
poems. 

All  these  were  groups  organised  on  the  basis 
of  the  special  professions  pursued  by  the  mem- 
bers of  each  respective  group,  although  many  of 
the  groups  might  consist  eventually  of  persons  of 


Growth  of  the  Imperial  Power      83 

homogeneous  blood.  Besides  these  groups  there 
was  another  kind  based  solely  on  identity  of  blood, 
that  is  to  say,  on  the  principle  of  racial  affinity. 
When  we  examine  the  circumstances  of  the  for- 
mation of  such  groups,  we  generally  find  that 
a  body  of  immigrants  at  a  certain  period  was 
constituted  as  a  group  by  itself  by  way  of  facili- 
tating the  administration.  Sometimes  several 
bodies  of  immigrants,  differing  as  to  the  period 
of  immigration,  were  formed  into  one  large  corps. 
In  the  corps  thus  formed,  there  would  have  na- 
turally been  people  of  various  occupations,  con- 
nected only  by  blood  relationship. 

The  third  kind  of  group  was  quite  unique  in 
the  motive  of  its  formation.  It  was  customary 
in  ancient  times  in  Japan  to  organise  a  special 
group  of  people  in  memory  of  a  certain  emperor 
or  of  some  noted  member  of  the  imperial  family. 
This  happened  generally  in  the  case  of  those  per- 
sonages who  died  early  and  were  much  lamented 
by  their  nearest  relations.  Sometimes,  however, 
a  similar  group  was  formed  in  honour  of  a  liv- 
ing emperor.  As  it  was  natural  that  groups  thus 
formed  paid  little  attention  to  the  consanguinity 
of  their  members,  it  is  presumable  that  they  might 
have  consisted  of  persons  of  promiscuous  racial 
origin.  On  the  other  hand,  it  is  also  clear  that 
there  could  be  no  necessity  for  conglomerating 
intentionally  men  of  heterogenous  racial  origin  in 
order  to  effect  a  mixture  of  blood  between  them. 
Such  a  motive  is  hardly  to  be  considered  as  com- 


84  History  of  Japan 

patible  with  the  spirit  of  the  age  in  which  the 
scrutinising  of  genealogies  was  an  important  busi- 
ness. Added  to  this,  the  organisation  of  a  group 
out  of  people  of  different  stocks  would  have  in- 
curred the  danger  of  making  its  administration 
exceedingly  difficult.  As  to  the  profession  pur- 
sued by  persons  belonging  to  such  a  group,  any 
generalisation  is  difficult.  Some  groups  might 
have  been  organised  mainly  from  the  need  of  cre- 
ating efficient  agricultural  labour,  in  order  to  pro- 
vide for  the  increasing  necessity  of  food  stuffs; 
in  other  words,  from  the  need  for  the  exploration 
of  new  lands.  Other  memorial  groups  might 
have  been  formed  for  the  sake  of  providing  for 
the  need  of  various  kinds  of  manual  labour,  and 
must  have  contained  men  of  divers  handicrafts 
and  professions,  so  as  to  be  able  to  provide  for  all 
the  daily  necessities  of  some  illustrious  personage, 
to  whom  the  group  was  subject.  When  men  of 
promiscuous  professions  formed  a  group  and  pro- 
duced sundry  kinds  of  commodities,  the  custom 
of  bartering  must  have  naturally  arisen  within  it, 
but  the  stage  of  bartering  in  a  market,  periodically 
opened  at  a  certain  spot,  such  as  is  described  in 
the  San-kuo-chih,  must  have  been  the  result  of  a 
gradual  development.  Moreover,  it  would  be  a 
too  hasty  conclusion  to  say  that  such  a  group  was 
a  selfproviding  economic  community.  On  the 
other  hand,  to  suppose  that  such  a  group  was  a 
corporation  something  like  the  guilds  of  medieval 
Europe  would  be  absurd.  Though  the  members 


Growth  of  the  Imperial  Power      85 

of  a  guild  suffered  greatly  under  the  oppression 
of  its  master,  still  no  relation  of  vassalage  is  re- 
cognisable in  the  system.  In  old  Japan,  however, 
men  grouped  in  the  manner  described  above  be- 
longed to  the  chieftain  of  that  group,  that  is  to 
say,  they  were  not  only  his  subjects  but  his  prop- 
erty, to  be  disposed  of  at  his  free  will.  As  to 
the  groups  which  pursued  a  special  craft,  I  do  not 
deny  the  existence  of  the  practice  of  bartering 
between  them.  In  a  society  in  the  stage  of  civilisa- 
tion of  old  Japan,  no  one  could  exist  without 
some  sort  of  bartering,  and  the  ruling  hand  was 
not  so  strong  and  rigorous  as  to  be  able  to  pro- 
hibit an  individual  of  the  group  from  exchanging 
the  work  of  his  hands  with  those  of  men  of  neigh- 
bouring groups,  even  when  the  lord  of  the  group 
wished  contrariwise.  And  it  must  be  kept  in  mind 
that  though  a  member  of  the  group  of  a  special 
profession  pursued  that  profession  as  his  daily 
business,  yet  he  must  have  been  engaged  in  agri- 
cultural work  also,  tilling  the  ground,  presumably 
in  the  midst  of  which  his  house  stood.  Agricul- 
tural products  thus  raised  could  perhaps  not  cover 
all  the  demands  of  his  family  for  subsistence. 
But,  on  the  other  hand,  that  all  the  victuals  they 
required  were  supplied  by  barter  or  by  distribu- 
tion on  the  part  of  the  chieftain  of  the  respective 
group  is  hardly  to  be  imagined. 

A  group  pursuing  the  same  occupation  was  of 
course  not  the  only  one  allowed  to  pursue  it,  nor 
was  their  habitation  limited  to  one  special  locality. 


86  History  of  Japan 

In  other  words,  there  were  many  groups  which 
were  engaged  in  the  same  occupation,  and  those 
groups  had  their  residence  in  different  provinces. 
It  is  not  clear  whether  all  the  groups  pursuing  the 
same  craft  were  under  the  jurisdiction  of  a  com- 
mon chieftain.  The  fact  is  certain,  however,  that 
many  groups  engaged*  in  the  same  craft  often 
had  a  common  chieftain,  notwithstanding  their 
occupying  different  localities.  The  chieftain  of  a 
group  was  sometimes  of  the  same  blood  as  the 
members  of  the  group,  as  in  the  case  where  the 
group  consisted  of  homogenous  immigrants.  The 
chieftains  of  immigrant  craft-groups,  the  number 
of  which  was  very  much  limited  in  this  country, 
belonged  to  this  category.  Sometimes,  however, 
the  chieftain  of  such  a  craft-group  was  not  of  the 
same  stock  as  the  members  of  the  group  under 
him,  though  the  latter  might  be  of  homogenous 
blood.  This  was  especially  the  case  when  a  group 
was  that  of  arms-bearers  composed  of  Ainu  or 
Haito.  These  valiant  people  were  enlisted  into 
a  homogeneous  company,  but  they  were  put  under 
the  direction  of  some  trustworthy  leader,  who  was 
of  the  same  racial  origin  as  the  imperial  family 
or  who  belonged  to  a  race  subjected  to  the  im- 
perial rule  long  before.  Lastly,  in  the  case  where 
a  group  was  a  memorial  institution,  it  is  probable 
that  the  chieftain  was  nominated  by  the  emperor 
without  regard  to  his  blood  relationship  to  the 
members  of  the  group  under  him. 
•  Summing  up  what  is  stated  above  at  length, 


Growth  of  the  Imperial  Power      87 

there  were  two  kinds  of  seigneurs  who  were  im- 
mediately under  the  sovereignty  of  the  Emperor; 
the  one  was  the  landlord,  and  the  other  was  the 
group-chieftain.  It  is  a  matter  of  course  that  the 
former  was  at  the  same  time  the  chieftain  of  the 
serfs  who  peopled  the  land  of  which  he  was  the 
lord,  while  the  latter  was  the  lord  de  facto  of  the 
land  inhabited  by  himself  and  his  clients,  so  that 
there  was  virtually  very  little  difference  between 
them.  As  regards  their  rights  over  the  land  and 
the  people  under  their  power  it  was  equally  abso- 
lute in  both  cases.  The  principal  difference  was 
that  the  right  of  the  former  rested  essentially 
on  his  being  the  lord  of  the  land,  and  that  of  the 
latter  on  his  being  the  chieftain  of  the  people. 
How  did  such  a  difference  come  into  existence? 
The  fact  that  there  were  many  landlords  who 
were  not  of  the  same  stock  as  the  imperial  family, 
might  be  regarded  as  a  prpof  that  they  were  de- 
scendants of  the  chiefs  who  held  their  lands  prior 
to  the  coming  over  of  the  Japanese,  or,  more 
strictly,  before  the  immigration  of  the  predomin- 
ant stock.  They  acquiesced  afterwards  in,  or 
were  subjected  to,  the  rule  of  the  Japanese,  but 
the  relation  between  the  Emperor  and  these  land- 
lords was  of  a  personal  nature,  and  the  right  of 
the  latter  over  their  own  land  remained  un- 
changed. Later  on  many  members  of  the  imperial 
family  were  sent  out  to  explore  new  lands  at  the 
expense  of  the  Ainu,  and  they  generally  installed 
themselves  as  masters  of  the  land  which  they 


88  History  of  Japan 

had  conquered.  These  new  landlords  assumed, 
as  was  natural,  the  same  power  as  that  which  was 
possessed  by  the  older  landlords  mentioned  above. 
The  power  of  the  imperial  family  was  thus  ex- 
tended into  a  wider  sphere  by  the  increase  in  the 
number  of  the  landlords  of  the  blood  royal,  but 
at  the  same  time  the  power  of  the  Emperor  him- 
self was  in  danger  of  being  weakened  by  the  over- 
growth of  the  branches  of  the  Imperial  family. 

As  to  the  chieftains  of  groups,  they  must  have 
been  of  later  origin  than  the  landlords,  for  to  be 
a  virtual  possessor  of  land  only  as  the  conse- 
quence of  being  chieftain  of  the  people  who  hap- 
pened to  occupy  the  land  shows  that  the  rela- 
tion between  the  people  and  the  land  inhabited  by 
them  was  the  result  of  some  historical  develop- 
ment. Moreover,  the  grouping  of  people  acord- 
ing  to  their  handicrafts  must  be  a  step  far  ad- 
vanced beyond  the  pristine  crowding  together  of 
people  of  promiscuous  callings.  It  is  also  an  im- 
portant fact  which  should  be  taken  into  consider- 
ation here  again  that  the  greater  part  of  the  craft- 
groups  consisted  of  immigrants.  From  all  these 
data  we  may  safely  enough  assume  that  the  chief- 
tains who  were  at  first  placed  at  the  head  of  a 
certain  group  of  people  perhaps  came  over  to  this 
country  simultaneously  with  the  predominant 
stock,  or  came  from  the  same  home  at  a  time 
not  very  far  distant  from  that  of  the  migration 
of  the  predominant  stock  itself,  and  that  they  dis- 
tinguished themselves  by  their  fidelity  to  the  em- 


Growth  of  the  Imperial  Power      89 

peror;  in  short,  these  chieftains  might  have  been 
mostly  of  the  same  racial  origin  as  the  imperial 
family,  except  in  the  case  of  groups  formed  by 
peninsular  immigrants  of  later  date.  The  increas- 
ing organisation  of  such  groups,  therefore,  must 
have  led  to  the  aggrandizement  of  the  power  of 
the  imperial  family;  but  there  was,  of  course,  the 
same  fear  of  a  relaxation  of  the  blood-ties  between 
the  emperor  and  the  chieftains  akin  in  blood  to 
him. 

Such  are  the  general  facts  relating  to  the  social 
and  political  life  of  Japan  before  the  seventh  cen- 
tury. If  its  development  had  continued  on  the 
lines  described  above,  the  ultimate  result  would 
have  been  the  division  of  the  country  among  a 
large  number  of  petty  chieftains,  heterogenous  in 
blood  and  in  the  nature  of  the  power  which  they 
wielded,  and  with  very  relaxed  ties  between  them- 
selves and  the  emperor.  We  can  observe  a  sim- 
ilar state  of  things  even  today  among  several  un- 
civilised tribes,  for  example,  among  the  natives  of 
Formosa  and  in  many  South  Sea  Islands.  Japan, 
however,  was  not  destined  to  the  same  fate.  How 
then  did  it  come  to  be  consolidated? 

Centralisation  presupposes  a  centre  into  which 
the  surroundings  may  be  centralised.  This  centre 
or  nucleus  for  centralisation  may  be  an  individual 
or  a  corporate  organism.  As  regards  the  latter, 
however,  in  order  to  become  a  nucleus  of  central- 
isation, it  must  be  solidly  organised,  which  is 
only  possible  in  an  advanced  stage  of  civilisation. 


90  History  of  Japan 

For  Japan  in  the  period  of  which  I  am  speaking, 
such  a  centre  could  create  only  a  very  loose  cen- 
tralisation, which  could  be  broken  asunder  very 
easily.  To  have  Japan  strongly  centralised,  it 
was  necessary  for  her  to  have  an  individual,  that 
is  to  say  the  Emperor,  as  a  nucleus  of  centralisa- 
tion. 

We  have  seen  the  process  by  which  the  pre- 
dominant stock  of  the  Japanese  grew  in  power 
and  influence,  as  well  by  exploring  new  lands  and 
installing  there  men  of  their  own  stock  as  lords, 
as  by  organising  more  and  more  new  groups  out 
of  the  immigrants  who  came  over  to  this  country, 
and,  perhaps,  also  out  of  a  certain  number  of 
autochthons.  Within  the  predominant  stock  it- 
self the  imperial  family  was  no  doubt  the  most 
influential.  Most  of  the  new  landlords  were  re- 
cruited from  the  members  of  that  family,  and 
many  memorial  groups  were  instituted  in  their 
honour  and  for  their  sakes.  Stretches  of  land 
which  were  exploited  by  these  clients  and  on  that 
account  stood  under  the  rule  of  the  family  in- 
creased gradually.  Such  an  estate  was  called 
miyake,  which  meant  a  royal  granary,  a  royal 
domain.  The  number  of  these  domains  constantly 
grew  as  time  went  on.  Not  only  in  the  neighbour- 
hood of  the  province  of  Yamato,  in  which  the 
emperors  of  old  time  used  to  have  their  residence, 
but  also  in  several  distant  provinces  new  miyake 
were  organised.  It  is  no  wonder  that  they  were 
more  generally  instituted  in  the  western  provinces, 


Growth  of  the  Imperial  Power      91 

especially  in  the  coastal  provinces  of  the  Inland 
Sea  and  in  the  island  of  Kyushu  rather  than  in 
other  directions,  because  it  was  natural  that  the 
imperial  house,  which  is  said  to  have  had  its  first 
foothold  in  the  west,  should  have  had  a  stronger 
influence  in  those  parts  than  in  provinces  close  to 
lands  still  retained  by  the  Ainu  and  not  yet  oc- 
cupied by  the  Japanese.  Still  it  is  a  credit  to  the 
power  of  the  imperial  house  that  in  the  first  half 
of  the  seventh  century,  we  can  already  find  such 
royal  domains  in  the  far  eastern  provinces  of 
Suruga  and  Kotsuke. 

The  method  of  increasing  the  miyake  was  not 
limited  to  the  exploitation  only  of  new  ground  pre- 
viously uncultivated.  Some  of  the  chieftains  were 
loyal  enough  to  present  to  the  emperor  a  part 
of  their  own  dominions  or  a  portion  of  their  cli- 
ents, with  or  without  the  lands  inhabited  by  them. 
Confiscation,  too,  was  a  method  often  resorted  to, 
when  the  crimes  of  some  of  the  landlords,  such 
as  complicity  in  rebellion,  insult  to  high  person- 
ages of  the  imperial  family,  and  so  forth,  merited 
forfeiture.  Sometimes  there  were  penitents  who 
made  presents  of  their  lands  or  people,  in  order 
either  not  to  lose  or  to  regain  the  royal  favour.  In 
these  sundry  ways  the  imperial  family  was  enabled 
to  increase  its  domains  to  a  very  large  extent,  do- 
mains which,  it  should  be  noted,  were  cultivated 
mostly  by  groups  of  immigrant  people,  generally 
superintended  by  capable  men  of  the  same  groups 


92  History  of  Japan 

who  knew  how  to  read,  write  and  make  up  the 
accounts  of  the  revenue. 

This  increase  in  number  of  miyake  was  nx  it- 
self the  increase  of  the  wealth  of  the  imperial 
family,  and  the  increase  of  its  power  at  the  same 
time.  It  is  a  matter  of  course  that  such  growth 
of  the  imperial  family  contributed  largely  to  the 
increase  of  the  imperial  power  itself,  and  was 
therefore  a  step  toward  centralisation.  With  a 
family  as  centre,  however,  a  strong  centralisation 
was  impossible  at  a  time  when  there  was  no  defin- 
ite regulation  concerning  the  succession.  The  law 
of  primogeniture  had  not  yet  been  enacted. 
Princesses  were  not  excluded  from  the  order  of 
succession.  In  such  an  age  too  strong  a  central- 
isation with  the  family  as  its  inucleus,  if  it  had 
been  possible,  could  only  have  been  a  cause  of 
constant  internal  feuds.  The  interests  of  certain 
members  of  the  imperial  family  might  have  come 
into  collision  with  those  of  the  reigning  Emperor, 
and  indeed  such  clashes  were  not  rare. 

Besides  this  weakness  which  was  like  a  running 
sore  in  the  process  of  centralisation,  there  was 
another  great  drawback  to  the  growth  of  the  im- 
perial power.  This  was  the  increase  in  power 
and  influence  of  certain  chieftains.  At  first  there 
were  many  chieftains  of,  nearly  equal  power,  and 
as  none  among  them  was  influential  enough  to  lord 
it  over  all  the  others,  it  was  not  very  difficult  for 
the  imperial  family  to  avail  itself  of  the  rivalry 
that  prevailed  among  them  and  to  control  them 


Growth,  of  the  Imperial  Power      93 

accordingly.  Some  families  among  the  chieftains, 
however,  began  to  grow  rich  and  powerful  like 
the  imperial  family  itself,  while  the  greater  part 
of  them  remained  more  or  less  stationary,  so 
that  a  wide  gap  between  the  selected  few  and 
the  rest  as  regards  their  influence  became  per- 
ceptible. Thus  five  conspicuous  families,  those 
of  Ohtomo,  Mononobe,  Nakatomi,  Abe,  and 
Wani,  first  emerged  from  the  numerous  members 
of  the  chieftain  class.  The  family  of  the  Soga, 
which  was  descended  from  Takeshiuchi,  the  min- 
ister of  the  Empress  Jingu,  became  afterwards 
very  prominent,  so  that  only  two  of  the  former 
five,  namely,  the  Ohtomo  and  the  Mononobe, 
could  cope  with  it.  Among  the  three  which  became 
prominent  in  place  of  the  former  five,  the  older 
two  continued  to  be  engaged  exclusively  in  war- 
like business,  while  the  third  provided  both  minis- 
ters and  generals.  The  magnitude  of  their  influ- 
ence in  the  latter  half  of  the  fifth  century  can  be 
well  imagined  from  the  fact  that  the  Emperor 
Yuryaku  complained  on  his  death  bed  that  his 
vassals'  private  domains  had  become  too  exten- 
sive. 

Such  was  the  result  which,  it  was  natural  to 
anticipate,  was  likely  to  accompany  the  growth 
of  Japan  under  the  rule  of  a  predominant  stock. 
It  could  not  be  said,  however,  to  be  very  bene- 
ficial to  the  real  consolidation  of  a  coherent  Em- 
pire. For  a  sovereign,  even  if  he  had  had 
strength  enough  to  exercise  absolute  rule,  it  must 


94  History  of  Japan 

have  been  far  more  difficult  to  govern  a  few  pow- 
erful chieftains  than  to  rule  over  many  of  lesser 
influence.  It  is  needless  to  say  that  such  must 
have  been  the  case  in  an  age  when  the  relations 
of  the  reigning  emperor  and  of  the  imperial 
family  were  not  well  organised  in  favour  of  the 
former.  Many  like  examples  may  be  cited  from 
the  early  history  of  the  Germans,  especially  from 
that  of  the  Merovingian  and  the  Carlovingian 
dynasties.  Among  the  few  prominent  chieftains, 
a  certain  one  family,  primus  inter  pares,  might 
become  exceedingly  powerful  and  then  over- 
shadow the  rest.  In  Japan,  too,  there  was  not 
lacking  a  majordomo  who  was  growing  great  at 
the  cost  of  the  imperial  prerogative. 

This  tendency  was  too  apparent  not  to  be  per- 
ceived by  the  sagacious  emperors  of  succeeding 
ages.  Increasing  their  material  resources,  there- 
fore, was  thought  by  them  the  best  means  of 
strengthening  themselves  and  of  guarding  against 
the  usurpation  of  their  power  by  ambitious  vas- 
sals. Long  before  the  Korean  expedition  of  the 
Empress  Jingu,  accordingly,  the  increase  of  the 
royal  domains  was  assiduously  aimed  at.  The 
Korean  expedition  itself  may  be  considered  as  one 
of  the  evidences  of  the  endeavour  to  develop  the 
imperial  power.  For  to  lead  an  expedition  over- 
sea necessarily  connotes  a  consolidated  empire. 
War,  however  uncivilised  the  age  in  which  it  is 
carried  on,  must  be,  more  than  any  other  under- 
taking, a  one  man  business.  So  we  can  not  err 


Growth  of  the  Imperial  Power      95 

much  in  supposing  that,  at  the  time  of  the  expedi- 
tion, the  centralisation  of  the  country  with  the 
emperor  as  its  nucleus  was  already  in  course  of 
progress.  Without  being  socially  organised  and 
consolidated,  it  would  have  been  very  hard  to 
muster  a  people  not  yet  sufficiently  organised  in  a 
political  sense.  It  was  enacted  just  about  this 
time,  that  all  the  royal  granaries  or  domains 
which  were  situated  in  the  province  of  Yamato, 
where  successive  royal  residences  had  been  estab- 
lished, should  be  the  inalienable  property  of  the 
reigning  emperor  himself,  and  that  even  the  heir 
to  the  throne  should  not  be  allowed  to  own  any 
of  them.  This  enactment  may  be  said  to  have 
been  the  beginning  of  the  separation  of  the  inter- 
ests of  the  reigning  emperor  himself  from  those 
of  the  imperial  family,  and  it  has  a  great  his- 
torical importance  in  the  sense  that  the  process 
of  centralisation  with  an  individual,  and  not  a 
family,  as  its  centre,  was  already  in  course  of  de- 
velopment. 

To  recapitulate  my  previous  argument,  in  order 
to  have  a  strongly  organised  Empire,  first  of  all 
it  was  necessary  at  that  time  to  put  an  end  to  the 
still  growing  power  of  the  prominent  chieftains, 
for  the  decrease  in  the  number  of  chieftains  only 
helped  to  make  the  remaining  few  stronger  and 
more  threatening.  Secondly,  not  the  imperial 
family  but  the  reigning  emperor  himself  must 
be  made  the  nucleus  of  centralisation.  This  then 
was  the  necessity  of  our  country  and  the  goal  of 


96  History  of  Japan 

the  endeavours  of  succeeding  emperors.  What 
most  accelerated  this  process  of  centralisation, 
however,  was  the  introduction  of  Buddhism  and 
the  systematic  adoption  of  Chinese  civilisation, 
imported,  not  through  the  intermediation  of  the 
peninsular  states,  but  directly  from  China  herself. 
The  former  contributed  by  changing  the  spirit  of 
the  age,  so  that  innovation  could  be  undertaken 
without  risking  the  total  dissolution  of  the  not 
yet  sufficiently  consolidated  Empire,  while  the 
latter  facilitated  the  organisation  of  the  material 
resources  already  acquired,  and  paved  the  way  for 
their  further  increase. 

It  is  commonly  stated  that  in  552  A.D.,  the 
thirteenth  year  of  the  reign  of  the  Emperor  Kim- 
mei,  Buddhism  was  first  introduced  into  Japan, 
for  that  is  the  date  of  the  first  record  of  Bud- 
dhism in  the  imperial  court.  Owing  to  the  re- 
searches of  modern  historians,  however,  that  date 
is  no  longer  accepted  as  the  beginning  of  Bud- 
dhism in  Japan.  Buddhism,  which  is  said  to  have 
been  first  introduced  into  China  in  the  middle  of 
the  first  century  after  Christ,  began  to  flow  into 
the  Korean  peninsula  some  three  hundred  years 
later.  Among  the  three  peninsular  states,  the 
first  which  received  the  new  religion  was  Korea 
or  Kokuri,  which  was  the  nearest  to  China.  The 
Korean  chronicle  says  that  in  364  A.D.  Fu-Chien, 
a  powerful  potentate  of  the  "Chin  dynasty,  which 
existed  in  northern  China  at  that  time,  sent  an 
ambassador  to  Korea,  accompanied  by  a  Bud- 


Growth  of  the  Imperial  Power      97 

dhist  priest.  Twelve  years  later  than  Korea,  Ku- 
tara  received  Buddhism  from  southern  China. 
Shiragi  was  the  latest  of  the  three  to  accept  the 
new  religion,  for  it  was  not  until  527  A.D.  that 
Buddhism  was  recognized  in  that  state.  Perhaps, 
however,  the  people  of  Shiragi  had  been  ac- 
quainted with  it  at  an  earlier  epoch,  though  it 
would  not  be  surprising  if  this  had  not  been  the 
case.  The  geographical  position  of  Shiragi 
obliged  it  for  long  to  be  the  last  state  in  the  pen- 
insula to  receive  Chinese  civilisation.  It  is  not 
the  Buddhism  of  Shiragi,  therefore,  but  that  of 
Korea  and  Kutara  which  had  to  do  with  the  his- 
tory of  our  country. 

At  that  time,  in  the  southern  part  of  the  pen- 
insula, there  were  many  minor  semi-independent 
communities  under  the  tutelage  of  Japan.  A  resi- 
dent-general was  sent  from  Japan  to  whom  the 
affairs  of  the  protectorate  were  entrusted. 
Though  the  existence  in  the  peninsula  of  a  region 
subject  directly  to  the  Emperor  of  Japan,  that 
is  to  say,  the  extension  oversea  of  the  Japanese 
dominion,  is  not  certified  to  by  any  written  evi- 
dence, the  history  of  the  early  relations  between 
Japan  and  the  peninsula  cannot  be  adequately  ex- 
plained, unless  we  assume  that  this  imperial  do- 
main on  the  continent  was  the  stronghold  of 
Japanese  influence  over  the  peninsula,  around 
which  the  minor  states  clustered  as  their  centre. 
Kutara,  which  divided  the  sphere  of  Japanese  in- 
fluence from  Korea,  had  been  suffering  much  from 


98  History  of  Japan 

the  encroachment  of  the  Koreans  on  the  north. 
To  counteract  Korea,  which  allied  herself  with 
the  successive  dynasties  in  northern  China,  Ku- 
tara  tried  to  court  the  favour  of  the  states  which 
came  successively  into  existence  in  southern  China. 
That  Buddhism  *  in  Kutara  was  propagated  by 
priests  from  China  meridional  may  account  for 
the  intercourse  which  grew  up  between  the  penin- 
sular state  and  the  south  of  China.  Still,  however 
much  Kutara  might  have  desired  assistance  from 
that  quarter,  the  distance  was  too  great  for  it  to 
have  obtained  any  efficient  relief,  even  if  the 
southern  Chinese  had  wished  to  afford  it,  so  that 
Kutara  was  at  last  compelled  to  apply  for  help 
to  Japan,  which  was  the  real  master  of  the  land 
bordering  it  on  the  south.  This  is  the  reason  why 
soon  after  the  expedition  of  the  Empress  Jingu, 
Kutara  initiated  a  very  intimate  intercourse  with 
our  country.  From  that  state  princes  of  the  blood 
were  sent  as  hostages  to  Japan  one  after  another, 
an  unruly  minister  of  that  state  was  summoned 
to  justify  himself  before  an  Emperor  of  Japan, 
a  topographical  survey  of  Kutara  was  undertaken 
by  Japanese  officials,  and  reinforcements  were 
despatched  thither  several  times  from  our  coun- 
try. After  all,  Japan  was  not  the  losing  party  in 
her  peninsular  relations.  The  knowledge  of  the 
Chinese  classics  was  the  most  important  boon  the 
intercourse  conferred  on  our  country.  Not  less 
important  was  the  introduction  of  Buddhism. 
The  doubt,  however,  remains  whether  Bud- 


Growth  of  the  Imperial  Power       99 

dhism,  which  began  to  flow  into  Kutara  in  376 
A.D.,  could  have  remained  so  long  confined  in 
that  state  as  not  to  have  been  introduced  into 
Japan  till  552  A.D.,  notwithstanding  the  intimate 
relations  between  the  two  countries.  The  wor- 
ship of  Buddha  must  have  been  practised  at  an 
earlier  period,  most  probably  in  private,  by  im- 
migrants from  the  peninsular  state,  who  had  al- 
ready imbibed  the  rudiments  of  the  new  religion 
in  their  original  home.  Moreover,  in  speaking  of 
the'  propagation  of  Buddhism  in  Japan,  we  must 
look  back  into  the  history  of  our  intercourse  with 
southern  China. 

In  the  preceding  chapter  I  mentioned  the  de- 
scription of  our  country  given  in  the  San-kuo-chih. 
There  we  are  told  that  intercourse  was  carried  on 
between  Japan  and  northern  China  through  the 
Chinese  provinces  in  the  peninsula.  It  was  the 
two  peninsular  states  arising  out  of  the  ruin  of 
these  Chinese  provinces  which  paved  the  way  for 
the  intercourse  of  Japan  with  southern  China. 
Not  only  did  we  obtain  through  Kutara  knowl- 
edge about  southern  China  under  the  dynasty  of 
the  East  Chin,  but  the  first  Japanese  ambassa- 
dors sent  thither  at  the  beginning  of  the  fifth  cen- 
tury could  reach  their  destination  only  through 
the  intermediation  of  Korea  or  Kokuri,  which 
furnished  our  ambassadors  with  guides.  After 
that  there  were  frequent  goings  to  and  fro  of  the 
people  of  China  and  Japan,  notwithstanding  the 
rapidly  succeeding  changes  of  dynasty  in  southern 


ioo  History  of  Japan 

China.  It  was  through  the  intercourse  thus  ini- 
tiated that  several  kinds  of  industry,  more  es- 
pecially weaving,  were  introduced  into  Japan 
from  southern  China,  and  had  a  very  deep  and 
enduring  effect  on  the  history  of  our  country. 
There  were  immigrants,  too,  from  southern  China 
into  Japan,  and  among  them,  some  were  so  pious 
as  to  build  temples  in  the  districts  in  which  they 
settled,  and  to  practise  the  cult  of  Buddha, 
which  they  had  brought  with  them  from  their 
homes.  Ssuma-Tateng  of  the  Liang  dynasty,  who 
came  over  to  Japan  in  522  A.D.,  is  one  of  the  out- 
standing examples.  Such  was  the  history  of  Bud- 
dhism in  Japan  before  the  memorable  thirteenth 
year  of  the  Emperor  Kimmei.  The  event  which 
happened  in  that  year,  therefore,  has  an  import- 
ance only  on  account  of  the  pompous  presentation 
by  Kutara  of  Buddhist  images  and  sutras  to  our 
imperial  court. 

Who,  then,  first  countenanced,  patronised,  and 
was  converted  to  the  newly  imported  religion? 
Naturally  the  progressives  of  that  age,  among 
whom  the  Soga  were  the  foremost.  Unlike  the 
two  other  conspicuous  families  of  Ohtomo  and 
Mononobe,  who  served  exclusively  as  military 
lords,  the  family  of  Soga  supplied  not  only  the 
military,  but  the  civil  and  dimplomatic  services 
also.  This  naturally  gave  them  very  frequent  ac- 
cess to  the  imported  civilisation  in  contrast  to  the 
simple  soldiers,  who  are  generally  prone  to  be 
more  conservative  than  civil  officials.  As  the 


Growth  of  the  Imperial  Power    101 

chief  administrator  and  chief  treasurer,  the  Soga 
family  could  not  dispense  with  the  employment 
of  secretaries,  whose  posts  were  monopolised  at 
that  time  by  groups  of  immigrant  scribes.  In 
this  way  the  immigrants  From  the  peninsula,  after- 
wards reinforced  by  those  coming  direct  from 
southern  China,  flocked  to  the  palace  of  the  Soga 
family,  and  they  worked  naturally  for  the  in- 
crease of  the  power  of  their  patron.  In  short, 
a  large  number  of  men,  furnished  with  more  liter- 
ary education  than  the  ordinary  Japanese  of  the 
time,  became  the  clients  of  the  family. 

Of  the  two  rivals  of  the  Soga  family,  that 
which  was  the  first  to  decline  in  power  was  the 
Ohtomo.  The  next  to  decay  was  the  family  of 
the  Mononobe.  The  fall  of  the  rivals  of  the 
Soga  must  be  attributed  to  the  growth  of  the 
latter  family,  which  owed  much  to  the  help  given 
by  the  immigrants  mentioned  above.  And  as  the 
introducers  of  Buddhism  were  to  be  found  among 
these  immigrants,  it  was  very  natural  that  the 
family  of  Soga  should  be  among  the  first  to  be 
converted  to  the  new  religion.  Thus  the  aggran- 
disement of  the  Soga  family,  the  propagation  of 
Buddhism  which  it  patronised,  and  the  progress 
of  civilisation  in  general  went  on  hand  in  hand. 
In  the  middle  of  the  sixth  century,  that  is  to  say, 
in  the  reign  of  the  Emperor  Kimmei,  Iname  was 
the  head  of  the  Soga  family.  In  his  time  the 
Mononobe  family  could  still  hold  its  own  against 
him,  though  at  some  disadvantage.  When,  how- 


IO2  History  of  Japan 

ever,  Umako,  the  son  of  Iname,  succeded  his 
father,  he  was  at  last  able  to  overthrow  the  power 
of  his  antagonist  Moriya  of  the  Mononobe,  after 
defeating  and  killing  him  in  battle,  with  the  aid 
of  the  prince  Shotoku,  who  was  also  a.  devotee  of 
the  new  religion. 

Thus  in  the  course  of  several  hundred  years 
the  gradual  process  of  centralisation  had  been 
slowly  drawing  to  its  goal.  In  the  beginning  of 
the  seventh  century  at  last,  the  noted  families  of 
old  were  all  eclipsed  by  the  single  family  of  the 
Soga,  which  towered  alone  in  wealth  and  power 
above  the  others.  At  the  same  time  instead  of 
having  the  imperial  house  as  the  nucleus  of  cen- 
tralisation, the  Emperor  began  to  tower  high 
above  the  other  members  of  his  family.  He  was 
the  owner  of  a  very  vast  domain  and  of  a  multi- 
tude of  people  of  various  classes.  He  was  the 
head  of  the  ancestral  cult.  The  sacred  emblem  of 
his  divine  origin,  which  had  formerly  been  kept 
in  the  imperial  camp,  was  now  removed  from  the 
palace  for  fear  of  profanation,  and  taken  to  its 
present  resting-place  in  the  province  of  Ise.  Yet 
the  removal  did  more  to  increase  than  to  lessen 
the  sanctity  of  his  person.  On  the  other  hand,  his 
authority  was  in  danger  of  being  usurped  by  the 
all-powerful  mayor  of  the  palace,  the  family  of 
Soga,  which  had  become  too  strong  for  the  em- 
peror easily  to  manage.  The  times  became  very 
critical.  In  order  to  push  still  further  the  process 
of  centralisation  which  had  been  going  on,  and  to 


Growth  of  the  Imperial  Power    103 

make  the  empire  better  conslidated,  some  decisive 
stroke  was  necessary.  And  the  revolutionary 
change  was  at  last  accelerated  by  the  overgrown 
power  of  the  Soga  family,  the  opening  of  regular 
intercourse  with  China,  and  above  all  the  strong 
necessity  within  and  without  to  consolidate  the 
empire  more  and  more. 


CHAPTER  V 

REMODELING   OF   THE    STATE 

JAPAN  stood  on  the  verge  of  a  crisis,  and  it 
was  saved  from  catastrophe  by  two  causes.  First, 
by  the  ceaseless  importation  of  high  Chinese  civil- 
isation, which  steadily  encouraged  the  political 
concentration;  secondly,  by  the  necessity  of  cen- 
tralisation so  as  to  push  on  vigorously  the  attack 
on  the  still  powerful  Ainu. 

As  I  have  mentioned  several  times  before,  the 
Ainu  had  been  a  losing  party  in  the  racial  struggle 
with  the  Japanese,  yet  their  resistance  had  been 
a  very  stubborn  one,  so  that  at  the  end  of  the  sixth 
century  they  could  still  hold  their  ground  against 
the  Japanese  on  the  southern  boundary  of  the 
present  provinces  of  Iwaki  and  Iwashiro,  which 
roughly  corresponds  to  latitude  37°  N.  The  north- 
ern part  of  Japan,  therefore,  was  still  in  constant 
danger  of  incursions  by  the  hairy  race.  For  a 
country  in  the  infant  stage  of  consolidation,  as 
Japan  was  at  that  time,  it  was  by  no  means  an 
easy  task  to  ward  off  the  frequent  inroads  of  that 
race,  and  at  the  same  time  to  continue  the  process 
of  the  inner  organisation  of  the  state.  One  would 
perhaps  wonder  at  my  conclusion,  starting  from 

104 


Remodeling  of  the  State       105 

the  consideration  that  the  Ainu  scare  was  not  such 
a  fearful  thing  as  to  influence  the  natural  growth 
of  a  state  formed  by  the  stronger  race.  This  mis- 
conception arises  from  the  ignorance  of  the  fact 
that  the  famous  dictum  "delenda  est  Carthago" 
was  only  pronounced  after  the  first  Punic  war. 
Necessity  by  itself  does  not  create  the  desire  to 
secure  what  is  necessary.  The  desire  to  attain  any 
aim  first  comes  into  consciousness  when  one  begins 
to  feel  strong  enough  to  venture  to  attain  it. 
When  the  Ainu  was  very  powerful,  the  Japanese 
had  to  contend  with  them  mainly  in  order  to  se- 
cure a  foothold  against  them.  It  was  none  the 
less  necessary  for  the  Japanese  to  continue  to 
struggle  with  the  Ainu,  when  the  former  became 
strong  enough  to  face  the  antagonist  evenhanded. 
Lastly,  the  time  arrived  now  when  it  became  an 
urgent  necessity  for  the  Japanese  to  crush  the 
Ainu,  in  order  to  achieve  undisturbed  a  full  polit- 
ical organisation  in  the  domain  within  the  four 
seas.  In  short,  when  the  Japanese  'became  so 
convinced  of  their  might  that  they  could  not  tol- 
erate any  rival  within  the  principal  islands,  they 
found  it  even  more  indispensable  to  organise  them- 
selves as  compactly  as  possible  under  one  strong 
supreme  head  than  ever  before. 

What  most  facilitated  the  centralisation  under 
the  imperial  rule  was  of  course  the  imported  Chi- 
nese civilisation.  To  say  sooth,  several  centuries 
of  the  slow  infiltration  of  that  high  civilisation 
had  already  attained  a  great  deal  of  influence, 


io6  History  of  Japan 

but  it  was  rather  a  smuggled,  and  not  a  really 
legalised  importation.  Moreover,  China  her- 
self, the  source  from  which  the  civilisation  had  to 
be  imported,  had  been  dismembered  for  a  long 
time,  so  that  until  581  A.D.  the  country  could 
hardly  be  called  a  unified  state  at  all.  How  could 
we  expect  to  find  in  a  country  where  no  order 
ruled  a  model  suitable  to  be  employed  as  exem- 
plar to  effect  a  durable  political  reform.  It  is  not 
strange,  therefore,  that,  notwithstanding  the  long 
years  of  intercourse  between  the  two  countries, 
only  a  very  slight  change  had  been  thereby  occa- 
sioned in  our  country  as  regards  our  political  or- 
ganisation. Any  change  which  was  wrought  in 
our  political  sphere  by  Chinese  influence  was  ef- 
fected in  a  very  indirect  way,  having  worked  its 
way  through  multifarious  social  changes  caused 
by  the  contact  with  the  high  alien  civilisation.  No 
direct  political  clue  could  be  followed  up  from 
China  to  this  country.  To  achieve  the  purpose 
of  borrowing  from  China  the  necessary  materials 
for  the  reconstruction  of  political  Japan,  we  had 
to  wait  longer,  that  is  to  say,  till  the  inauguration 
of  regular  intercourse  between  this  country  and 
China  also  politically  unified  and  concentrated. 

That  memorable  year  came  at  last.  In  607 
A.D.  Ono-no-Imoko  was  despatched  as  official  en- 
voy to  China,  which  at  that  time  was  under  the 
second  emperor  of  the  dynasty  of  Sui.  Even  be- 
fore this  date,  however,  since  the  accession  of  the 
Empress  Suiko,  as  the  result  of  the  busy  inter- 


Remodeling  of  the  State       107 

course  between  us  and  the  peninsular  states,  vari- 
ous arts  and  useful  sciences  of  Chinese  origin  had 
been  introduced  into  this  country,  among  which 
astronomy,  the  oldest  perhaps  of  all  sciences  ev- 
erywhere in  the  world,  was  the  most  noteworthy. 
Connected  with  this  science,  the  art  of  calendar- 
making  was  introduced  for  the  first  time  into  Ja- 
pan. It  would  be  a  gross  mistake,  if  we  thereby 
conclude  that  we  had  no  means  of  defining  the 
dates  of  events  prior  to  this  introduction.  Al- 
though we  could  not  by  ourselves  make  an  inde- 
pendent calendarial  system,  yet  the  Japanese,  at 
least  the  naturalised  scribes,  had  already  been  ac- 
quainted with  two  chronological  methods.  The 
one  was  to  define  a  date  by  counting  from  the  year 
of  the  accession  of  a  reigning  emperor.  The 
other  method  was  that  which  had  prevailed  long 
since  in  China,  that  is  to  say,  to  define  a  date  by 
counting  according  to  the  cyclical  order  of  the 
twelve  zodiacal  signs,  interlaced  with  the  cyclical 
order  of  ten  attributes,  so  that  to  complete  one 
cycle  sixty  years  were  necessary.  Some  groups 
of  scribes,  perhaps,  pursued  the  former  method, 
while  others  favoured  the  latter.  Contradictory 
statements  and  evident  repetitions  abundantly 
found  in  the  Nihongi  were  thus  occasioned  by  the 
existence  of  historical  materials,  dated  according 
to  two  different  chronological  systems.  For  the 
compilers  of  the  famous  chronicle  sometimes  mis- 
took one  and  the  same  event  found  in  different 
sources  and  given  in  two  different  chronological 


io8  History  of  Japan 

systems,  for  two  independent  events  resembling 
each  other  only  in  certain  superficial  respects. 
Otherwise  they  misunderstood  two  entirely  dis- 
tinct events  having  the  same  cyclical  designation 
in  date  as  a  single  occurrence,  narrated  in  two 
different  ways,  ignoring  the  fact  that  there  might 
have  been  two  like  events  which  happened  at  a 
chronological  distance  of  sixty  years  or  some  mul- 
tiple of  that  cycle  of  time.  Confusion  of  this 
kind  was  unavoidable  in  ages  where  there  was 
no  established  method  of  defining  a  historical  date. 
It  was  a  great  gain,  therefore,  that  astronomy  and 
the  art  of  calendar-making  chanced  to  be  intro- 
duced in  602  A.D.,  the  tenth  year  of  the  reign  of 
the  Empress. 

Another  not  less  important  boon  which  we  re- 
ceived from  China  through  the  peninsular  states 
was  the  gradation  of  official  ranks.  Anterior  to 
this  period  we  had  something  like  a  hierarchical 
system  with  the  emperor  as  the  political  and  social 
supreme,  but  the  system,  if  it  could  be  called  such, 
was  nothing  but  a  chain  of  vassalship  fastened 
very  loosely.  It  was  far  from  a  well-ordered 
gradation,  which  is  in  reality  the  beginning  of 
equalisation  and  could  only  be  effected  by  a  very 
strong  hand.  The  dignity  of  the  emperor  could 
be  excellently  upheld  by  having  under  him  grad- 
ated subjects,  but  the  gradation  itself  did  not  hin- 
der those  subjects  from  thinking  that  they  were 
equals  before  the  emperor  as  his  subjects.  This 
gradation  came  into  practice  in  the  year  604  A.D. 


Remodeling  of  the  State       109 

In  the  same  year  the  famous  "Seventeen  Ar- 
ticles" was  also  promulgated.  This  was  a  collec- 
tion of  moral  maxims  imparted  to  all  subjects, 
especially  to  administrative  officials,  as  instruc- 
tions. The  principle  pervading  the  articles  unmis- 
takably betrays  that  much  of  it  was  borrowed 
from  Chinese  moral  and  political  precepts.  The 
only  exception  is  the  second  article,  which  encour- 
aged the  worship  of  Buddha.  It  was  natural 
that  such  articles  should  be  decreed  by  Prince  Sho- 
toku,  who  was  under  the  tutorship  of  a  Korean 
priest  and  a  naturalised  peninsular  savant. 

Having  so  far  adopted  the  elements  of  Chinese 
civilisation  secondhand  through  the  peninsular 
states,  we  could  savour  the  taste  of  refinement 
enjoyed  by  the  then  highly  advanced  nation  on 
the  continent,  embellish  thereby  life  in  the  court 
and  in  high  circles,  and  promote  not  a  little  our 
political  centralisation.  We  were  thus  put  in  the 
state  of  one  whose  thirst  becomes  much  aggra- 
vated after  taking  a  sip  of  water.  At  the  helm 
of  the  state  was  a  very  intelligent  personage, 
Prince  Shotoku,  nephew  and  son-in-law  of  the 
Empress  and  heir-presumptive  to  the  throne.  It 
was  natural  for  him  and  the  progressive  minister, 
Umako  of  the  Soga,  to  crave  for  more  of  the 
Chinese  knowledge  and  enlightenment.  The  pe- 
ninsular states,  which  were  never  very  far  ad- 
vanced in  civilisation,  had  transmitted  to  us  all 
that  they  could  teach.  There  was  little  left  in 
which  those  states  were  in  advance  of  us.  Then 


no  History  of  Japan 

where  should  we  turn  to  obtain  more  learning  and 
more  culture  except  to  China  herself? 

Diplomatic  considerations  were  also  an  induce- 
ment for  us  to  be  drawn  towards  China  more 
closely  than  before.  Just  at  this  time  we  were 
gradually  losing  our  ground  in  the  peninsula  as 
the  result  of  the  constant  incursions  of  ascendant 
Shiragi  into  the  Japanese  protectorate,  and  of  the 
perfidious  policy  of  Kutara,  which  feigned  to  be 
our  ally  only  for  the  sake  of  playing  a  dubious 
game  against  her  neighbours,  and  paid  more  re- 
spect to  China  than  she  did  toward  Japan.  Ko- 
kuri  in  the  north,  the  strongest  of  the  three  penin- 
sular states  and  the  danger  to  waning  Kutara,  was 
just,  at  a  critical  time,  menaced  by  China  under 
the  quite  recently  established  dynasty  of  Sui.  No 
wonder  that  Japan  wished  to  know  more  about 
China,  the  country  with  which  we  had  been  al- 
ready communicating  directly  as  well  as  indirectly, 
though  very  sporadically.  An  envoy  to  China 
was  the  natural  consequence. 

Yang-ti,  the  second  Emperor  of  the  Sui  dynasty 
was  very  ambitious  and  enterprising.  His  invasion 
of  Kokuri,  though  it  collapsed  in  utter  failure,  was 
conducted  on  such  a  grand  scale  that  it  reminds  us 
of  the  Persian  invasion  of  Greece  under  Xerxes, 
described  by  Herodotus.  This  Yang-ti  was  much 
flattered  at  receiving  an  envoy  from  the  island 
far  beyond  the  sea.  Perhaps  he  rejoiced  the  more 
at  finding  an  ally  in  the  rear  of  Kokuri,  which  he 
was  then  intending  to  invade.  So  he  received  the 


Remodeling  of  the  State       in 

Japanese  envoy  quite  cordially,  and  on  the  latter' s 
homeward  journey  the  Emperor  ordered  a  cour- 
tier to  escort  the  envoy  to  Japan.  This  escort 
was  on  his  return  to  China  accompanied  by  the 
same  envoy  whom  he  had  escorted  hither.  Ono- 
no-Imoko,  who  was  thus  twice  sent  to  China  as 
envoy,  must  have  seen  much  of  that  country,  and 
probably  fetched  many  articles  to  delight  the  eyes 
of  the  Japanese  of  the  higher  classes,  who  were 
enraptured  with  everything  foreign.  What  was 
the  most  important  event  connected  with  the  sec- 
ond despatch  of  the  envoy,  however,  was  the 
sending  abroad  with  him  of  students  to  study 
Buddhist  tenets  and  also  to  receive  secular  educa- 
tion in  China.  They  stayed  in  that  country  for 
a  very  long  while,  far  longer  than  those  who 
have  been  sent  abroad  by  the  Japanese  govern- 
ment in  recent  years  have  been  accustomed  to  stay 
in  Europe  and  America,  so  that  they  lived  in 
China  as  if  they  were  real  Chinese  themselves, 
and  were  deeply  imbued  with  Chinese  thoughts 
and  ideas.  Two  of  the  eight  students  who  ac- 
companied Ono-no-Imoko  to  China,  returned  to 
this  country  after  a  sojourn  of  more  than  thirty 
years,  during  which  they  witnessed  a  change  of 
dynasty,  and  the  rise  of  the  T'ang,  the  dynasty  in 
which  Chinese  civilisation  reached  its  apogee. 
One  of  the  two  students  who  returned  quite  a 
Chinese  to  Japan,  happened  to  become  a  tutor 
of  a  prince  who  afterwards  ascended  the  throne 
as  the  Emperor  Tenchi,  the  great  reformer.  By 


112  History  of  Japan 

the  way,  it  should  be  noticed  that  all  of  the  eight 
students  despatched  were  men  of  Chinese  origin 
without  exception,  being  naturalised  scribes  or 
their  descendants. 

The  peninsular  states  became  rather  jealous 
of  our  direct  intercourse  with  China,  for  they 
could  not  at  least  help  fearing  that  thenceforth 
they  would  not  be  able  to  play  off  China  and  Japan 
against  each  other  as  they  had  done  up  to  that 
time.  They,  therefore,  tried  to  flatter  us  by  send- 
ing to  this  country  envoys  more  frequently  than 
before.  It  was  at  one  of  these  ceremonial  court 
receptions  of  an  envoy  from  Kokuri,  that  Soga- 
no-Iruka,  the  son  of  Yemishi  of  the  Soga  and  the 
grandson  of  Umako,  was  killed  by  the  Prince 
Naka-no-Oye,  afterwards  the  Emperor  Tenchi, 
and  by  Nakatomi-no-Kamako,  afterwards  Kama- 
tari.  The  father  of  Iruka  soon  followed  his  son's 
fate,  and  with  him  the  main  branch  of  the  quon- 
dam all-powerful  family  of  the  Soga  came  to  an 
end. 

The  fall  of  the  house  of  the  Soga  may  be  as- 
cribed to  several  causes.  In  the  first  place,  it  be- 
came an  absolute  necessity  for  the  growth  of  the 
imperial  power  to  get  rid  of  the  too  arrogant 
Soga  ministers,  because  to  bear  with  them  any 
longer  would  have  endangered  the  imperial  pres- 
tige itself.  Secondly,  as  soon  as  the  family  of 
the  Soga  had  ceased  to  fear  its  rivals,  it  began 
to  be  divided  within  itself  by  internal  strife. 
Lastly,  a  quarrel  about  the  imperial  succession 


Remodeling  of  the  State       113 

brought  about  the  interweaving  of  the  above 
two  causes.  The  Prince  Naka-no-Oye,  being  the 
eldest  son  of  the  Emperor  Jomei,  was  naturally 
one  of  the  candidates  to  the  throne.  As  his 
mother,  however,  was  the  Empress  Kokyoku,  and 
therefore  not  of  the  Soga  blood,  the  Prince  was 
in  fear  lest  he  should  be  put  aside  from  the  order 
of  the  succession.  Besides,  he  was  very  much  en- 
raged at  the  overbearing  attitude  of  Yemishi  and 
his  son.  The  Nakatomi  family  to  which  Kama- 
tari belonged  was  one  of  the  five  old  illustrious 
names,  and  had  been  chiefly  engaged  in  religious 
affairs.  Kamatari  deeply  deplored  the  fact  that 
his  family  had  long  been  overshadowed  by  that  of 
the  Soga.  Being  qualified  as  a  capable  statesman, 
he  foresaw  the  political  danger  to  which  Japan 
was  exposed  at  that  time.  The  lateral  branches 
of  the  Soga  family,  actuated  perhaps  by  jealousy 
against  the  main  branch,  joined  the  Prince  and 
Kamatari  in  annihilating  the  far  too  overgrown 
power  which  threatened  the  imperial  prerogative. 
Japan  thus  safely  passed  this  political  crisis.  The 
next  task  was  the  thorough  reconstruction  of  the 
social  and  political  organisations,  and  the  estab- 
lishment of  a  uniform  system  throughout  the 
whole  Empire. 

A  series  of  grand  reforms  was  inaugurated  in 
the  year  645  A.D.  in  the  name  of  the  reigning 
Emperor  Kotoku,  who  was  one  of  the  uncles  of 
the  Prince  on  his  mother's  side,  and  ascended  the 
throne  as  the  result  of  wise  self-denial  on  the  part 


114  History  of  Japan 

of  the  Prince.  The  first  reform  was  the  initia- 
tion of  the  period  name,  a  custom  which,  in  China, 
had  been  in  vogue  since  the  Han  dynasty.  The 
period  name  which  was  adopted  at  first  in  Japan 
in  the  reign  of  the  Emperor  was  Tai-Kwa.  This 
Chinese  usage,  after  it  was  once  introduced  into 
our  country,  has  been  continued  until  today, 
though  with  a  few  short  interruptions. 

The  next  step  in  the  reform  was  the  nomina- 
tion of  governors  for  the  eastern  provinces.  Be- 
fore this  time  we  had  already  provincial  govern- 
ors installed  in  regions  under  the  direct  imperial 
sway,  that  is  to  say,  in  provinces  where  imperial 
domains  abounded  and  imperial  residences  were 
located.  These  provincial  governors  depended 
wholly  on  the  imperial  power,  and  could  at  any 
time  be  recalled  at  the  Emperor's  pleasure.  That 
such  governors  were  now  installed  in  the  far  east- 
ern provinces  bordering  on  the  Ainu  territory 
shows  that,  as  these  provinces  were  newly  estab- 
lished ones,  it  was  easier  to  enforce  the  reform 
there  than  in  older  provinces,  in  which  time-hon- 
oured customs  had  taken  deep  root  and  chieftains 
ruled  almost  absolutely,  so  that  even  those  radical 
reformers  hesitated  for  a  moment  to  try  their 
hand  on  them. 

The  change,  in  the  same  year,  of  the  imperial 
residence  to  the  province  of  Settsu,  near  the  site 
where  the  great  commercial  city  of  Osaka  now 
stands,  was  also  one  of  the  very  remarkable 
events.  Imperial  residences  of  the  older  times 


Remodeling  of  the  State       115 

had  been  shifted  here  and  there  according  to  the 
change  of  the  reigning  emperor.  No  one  of  them, 
however,  as  far  back  as  the  time  of  Jimmu,  the 
first  Emperor,  seems  to  have  been  located  out  of 
the  provinces  of  Yamato,  except  the  dwelling- 
place  of  the  Emperor  Nintoku.  The  removal  of 
the  imperial  residence  in  645  A.D.  to  the  province 
of  Settsu,  where  facilities  for  foreign  intercourse 
could  be  secured,  signifies  that  the  imperial  house 
was  turning  its  gaze  toward  the  west,  with  eyes 
more  widely  open  than  before. 

The  second  year  of  the  reform  began  with  far 
more  radical  innovations  than  the  first,  that  is  to 
say,  the  abolishment  of  the  group-system  and  of 
the  holding  of  lands  by  landlords.  All  the  lands 
privately  held  by  local  lords  and  all  the  people 
subjected  to  group-chieftains  were  decreed  to  be 
henceforth  public  and  free  and  subject  only  to 
the  Emperor.  The  designation  of  local  lords  and 
group-chieftains  were  allowed  to  be  kept  by  those 
who  had  formerly  possessed  them,  but  only  as 
mere  titles.  In  order  to  allow  this  reform  to  run 
smoothly,  the  Prince  Naka-no-Oye  himself  set 
the  example  by  renouncing,  in  behalf  of  the  reign- 
ing Emperor,  his  right  over  his  clients  numbering 
five  hundred  twenty  four  and  his  private  domain 
consisting  of  one  hundred  eighty-one  lots. 

In  lands  thus  made  public,  provinces  were  es- 
tablished, and  governors  were  appointed.  Under 
those  governors  served  the  former  local  lords  and 
group-chieftains  as  secretaries  of  various  official 


n6  History  of  Japan 

grades  or  as  district  governors,  all  salaried,  paid 
in  natural  products,  of  course,  since  no  currency 
existed  at  that  time.  In  every  province,  a  census 
was  ordered  to  be  taken,  and  arable  lands  were 
distributed  according  to  the  number  of  persons 
in  a  family,  with  variations  with  respect  to  their 
ages  and  sexes.  The  distribution  had  to  be  re- 
newed after  the  lapse  of  a  certain  number  of 
years,  paralleled  to  the  renewal  of  the  census. 
The  tax  in  rice  was  to  be  levied  commensurate 
with  the  area  of  the  lot  of  land  distributed.  Ad- 
ditional taxes  in  silk,  flax,  or  cotton  were  to  be 
paid  both  per  family  and  according  to  the  area 
of  the  distributed  lot.  Corvee  was  also  imposed, 
and  any  one  who  did  not  serve  in  person  was 
obliged  to  pay,  in  rice  and  textiles  for  a  substi- 
tute. Besides  these  imposts,  there  were  many  cir- 
cumstantial regulations  concerning  the  tribute  in 
horses,  equipment  of  soldiers,  use  of  post-horses, 
interment  of  the  dead  of  various  ranks,  and  so 
forth.  These  laws  and  regulations  taken  together 
are  called  the  Ohmi  laws,  from  the  name  of  the 
province  into  which  the  Emperor  Tenchi  had  re- 
moved his  residence. 

For  three-score  years  after  the  promulgation 
of  the  reform  of  Taikwa,  there  were  many  fluc- 
tuations, sometimes  reactionary  and  sometimes 
progressive,  and  many  additions  and  amendments 
were  made  to  the  first  enactments  published.  In 
general,  however,  they  remained  unchanged,  and 
were  at  last  systematized  and  codified  in  the  sec- 


Remodeling  of  the  State       117 

ond  year  of  the  era  of  Tai'ho,  that  is  to  say,  in  702 
A.D.  This  is  what  the  Japanese  historians  desig- 
nate by  the  name  of  the  Tai-ho  Code. 

After  an  impartial  comparison  of  this  code  with 
the  elaborate  legislation  of  the  T'ang  dynasty, 
one  cannot  deny  that  the  former  was  mainly  a 
minute  imitation  of  the  latter.  Preambles  and 
epilogues  issued  at  the  time  of  the  first  proclama- 
tion were  taken  from  passages  of  the  Chinese 
classics,  and  there  are  many  phrases  in  the  text 
itself  which  plainly  betray  their  Chinese  origin. 
Many  regulations  were  inserted,  not  on  account 
of  their  necessity  in  this  country,  but  only  because 
they  were  found  in  the  legislation  of  the  T'ang 
dynasty. 

There  are  of  course  not  a  few  modifications, 
which  can  be  discerned  when  carefully  scrutinised, 
and  these  modifications  are  generally  to  be  found 
in  those  Chinese  laws  which  were  impossible  of 
introduction  into  our  country  without  change. 
Some  of  them,  having  been  planned  originally  in 
the  largest  Empire  of  the  world  and  in  an  age 
as  highly  civilised  as  that  of  the  T'ang,  were  too 
grand  in  scale,  so  that  they  had  to  be  minimised 
in  order  to  suit  the  condition  of  the  island  realm. 
Others  had  too  much  of  the  racial  traits  of  the 
Chinese  to  be  put  at  once  in  operation  in  a  coun- 
try such  as  Japan,  which  on  its  part  had  also  sun- 
dry peculiarities  not  to  be  easily  displaced  by  leg- 
islation originated  in  an  alien  soil.  This  was 
especially  the  case  with  respect  to  religious  mat- 


n8  History  of  Japan 

ters.  Though  it  is  a  question  whether  Shintoism 
may  be  called  a  religion  in  the  modern  scientific 
sense,  it  cannot  be  disputed  that  it  has  a  strong 
religious  element  in  it.  On  that  account,  it  had 
proved  a  great  obstacle  to  the  propagation  of 
Buddhism,  which  was  the  religion  embraced  at 
first  not  by  the  common  people  but  by  men  belong- 
ing to  the  upper  classes,  so  that  the  latter,  while 
earnestly  encouraging  the  inculcation  of  Budd- 
hism, were  obliged  to  show  themselves  not  alto- 
gether indifferent  to  the  old  deities.  In  behalf 
of  the  Shinto  cult,  special  dignitaries  were  ap- 
pointed, the  chief  of  whom  played  the  same  part 
as  the  Pontifex  Maximus  of  ancient  Rome.  Such 
an  institution  is  purely  Japanese  and  was  not  to 
be  found  in  the  Chinese  model.  Apart  from  these 
exceptions,  however,  the  reform  of  the  Tai-kwa 
era  was  essentially  a  Japanese  imitation  of  a  Chi- 
nese original. 

What  was  the  result,  then,  of  the  reform  under- 
taken partly  from  national  necessity,  but  partly 
also  from  love  of  imitation?  Let  me  begin  with 
the  bright  side  first. 

Whatever  be  the  intrinsic  merit  of  the  reform 
itself,  there  is  no  doubt  that  the  reform  came 
from  necessity.  It  was  absolutely  necessary  that 
Japan,  in  order  to  make  solid  progress,  should 
be  centralised  politically.  The  model  which  the 
reformers  selected  was  the  legislation  of  a 
strongly  centralised  monarchy.  In  this  respect  at 
least  it  admirably  fitted  the  necessity  of  Japan  at 


Remodeling  of  the  State       119 

that  time.  In  the  year  659,  fifteen  years  after 
the  promulgation  of  the  reform,  an  organised  ex- 
pedition consisting  of  a  large  number  of  squad- 
rons, was  despatched  along  the  coast  of  the  Sea 
of  Japan  as  far  north  as  the  island  now  called  by 
the  name  of  Hokkaido.  In  the  next  year  another 
expedition  was  sent  across  the  sea  to  the  conti- 
nental coast,  perhaps  to  the  region  at  the  mouth 
of  the  Amur.  Though  the  frontier  line  on  the 
main  island  was  not  pushed  forward  against  the 
Ainu  so  rapidly  as  the  progress  along  the  western 
coast,  owing  to  the  obstinate  resistance  of  the  tribe 
on  the  eastern  coast,  yet  the  victory  was  wholly 
on  the  side  of  the  Japanese.  The  removal  of  the 
imperial  residence  by  the  Emperor  Tenchi  in  the 
year  667  to  the  side  of  lake  Biwa,  in  the  province 
of  Ohmi,  marks  an  epoch  in  the  progress  of  the 
exploration  north-easternward.  For  the  new  site, 
a  little  distant  from  the  modern  town  of  Ohtsu, 
is  more  conveniently  situated  than  the  former  resi- 
dences, not  only  in  guarding  and  pushing  the 
north-eastern  frontier,  but  in  keeping  connection 
with  the  navigation  on  the  Sea  of  Japan.  The 
inland  lake  of  Biwa,  though  not  large  in  area,  is 
one  which  must  be  counted  as  something  in  a 
country  as  small  as  Japan.  Until  quite  recent 
times,  communication  between  Kyoto,  the  former 
capital,  and  Hokkaido  and  the  northern  provinces 
of  Hon-to  was  maintained,  not  along  the  eastern 
or  Pacific  shore,  but  via  the  Lake  and  the  Sea  of 
Japan.  Even  the  eastern  coast  of  the  province  of 


I2O  History  of  Japan 

Mutsu  seems  to  have  had  no  direct  communication 
by  sea  with  the  centre  of  the  Empire.  In  order 
to  reach  there  from  the  capital,  men  in  old  times 
were  obliged  to  take  generally  a  long  roundabout 
way  along  the  western  coast,  pass  the  Strait  of 
Tsugaru,  and  then  turn  southward  along  the  Pa- 
cific coast.  This  important  highway  of  the  sea 
route  of  old  Japan  was  connected  with  Kyoto  by 
the  navigation  across  lake  Biwa.  The  change  of 
the  imperial  residence  to  the  neighborhood  of 
Ohtsu,  which  is  the  key  of  the  lake  navigation 
routes,  had  no  doubt  a  great  historic  significance. 
Another  remarkable  event  which  contributed 
much  to  the  remodelling  of  the  state  was  the 
total  overthrow  of  the  Japanese  influence  in  the 
Korean  peninsula.  About  the  middle  of  the  sixth 
century  Mimana  was  taken  by  Shiragi,  and  with 
it  our  prestige  in  the  peninsula  suffered  a  severe 
loss.  Still  for  some  time  there  remained  to  Japan 
a  shadow  of  influence  in  the  existence  of  the  state 
of  Kutara,  though  the  latter  was  very  unreliable 
as  an  ally.  That  state  then  began  to  be  hard 
pressed  by  Shiragi  and  asked  for  our  help.  More 
than  once  we  sent  reinforcements,  sometimes  num- 
bering more  than  twenty  thousand  soldiers.  Arms 
and  provisions  were  also  freely  given.  Owing  to 
the  incompetence  of  the  Japanese  generals  de- 
spatched, however,  and  the  perfidious  policy  of 
Kutara,  our  assistance  proved  ineffective.  As  a 
counter  to  our  assistance  to  Kutara,  Shiragi  in- 
voked the  aid  *)f  the  T'ang  dynasty,  which  was 


Remodeling  of  the  State       121 

eager  to  establish  its  rule  over  the  peninsula.  In 
the  year  650  Kutara  was  at  last  destroyed  by  the 
co-operation  of  the  army  of  Shiragi  and  the  navy 
of  the  T'ang.  Next  it  was  the  turn  of  Kokuri 
to  be  invaded  by  the  T'ang  army.  A  Japanese 
army  consisting  of  more  than  ten  thousand  men 
was  sent  in  order  to  restore  Kutara  and  to  suc- 
cour Kokuri.  In  663  a  great  naval  battle  was 
fought  between  the  Chinese  squadrons  and  ours, 
ending  in  the  defeat  of  the  latter,  for  the  former, 
consisting  of  170  ships,  far  outnumbered  the  Jap- 
anese. With  this  defeat  our  hope  of  the  restora- 
tion of  Kutara  was  finally  lost.  The  remnants 
of  the  royal  family  of  Kutara  and  of  the  people 
of  that  state  numbering  more  than  three  thousand 
immigrated  into  Japan.  Kokuri,  too,  surrendered 
soon  afterwards  to  the  T'ang  in  668,  and  long 
before  this  Shiragi  had  become  a  tributary  state 
of  China.  The  influence  of  the  T'ang  dynasty 
prevailed  over  the  whole  peninsula. 

Since  this  time  we  were  reduced  to  defending 
our  interest,  not  on  the  Korean  peninsula,  but  by 
fortifying  the  islands  of  Tsushima  and  Iki  and 
the  northern  coast  of  Kyushu.  There  was  no 
breach  of  the  peace,  however,  between  Japan  and 
China  after  the  naval  battle  of  the  year  663,  for 
after  the  downfall  of  Kutara  we  had  no  impera- 
tive necessity  to  despatch  our  army  abroad,  and 
therefore  no  occasion  to  come  into  collision  with 
the  Chinese  army  in  the  peninsula.  China,  on 
her  part,  did  not  wish  to  make  us  her  enemy. 


122  History  of  Japan 

The  rough  sea  dividing  the  two  countries  made  it 
a  very  hazardous  task  to  try  to  invade  us,  even 
for  the  emperors  of  the  Great  T'ang.  A  Chinese 
general  who  had  the  duty  of  governing  the  for- 
mer dominion  of  Kutara  sent  embassies  several 
times  to  Japan.  At  one  time  an  embassy  was 
accompanied  by  two  thousand  soldiers  as  retinue, 
but  the  purpose  was  plainly  demonstrative.  We 
also  continued  to  send  embassies  to  China.  Peace 
was  thus  restored  on  our  western  frontier,  though 
under  conditions  somewhat  detrimental  to  our  na- 
tional honour. 

The  evacuation  of  the  peninsula  was  a  great 
respite  to  our  national  energy,  howsoever  it  be 
regretted.  First  of  all,  Japan  was  not  yet  a  match 
for  China  of  the  T'ang.  Moreover,  to  keep  up 
our  prestige  on  the  peninsula  was  too  costly  a 
matter  for  us,  even  if  we  had  been  able  to  sus- 
tain it,  and  by  this  evacuation  we  were  saved  from 
squandering  the  national  resources  which  were 
not  yet  at  their  full.  After  all,  for  Japan  at  that 
time  the  urgent  necessity  lay  not  in  geographical 
expansion  abroad,  and  affairs  on  the  peninsula 
were  of  far  less  importance  when  compared  with 
driving  the  Ainu  out  of  Hon-to.  Against  an  en- 
emy coming  from  the  west,  we  could  defend  our- 
selves without  much  difficulty,  the  rough  sea  being 
a'  strong  bulwark.  It  is  quite  another  kind  of 
matter  to  divide  the  Hon-to  with  the  Ainu  for 
long.  Japan  wanted  a  geographical  expansion 
not  without,  but  within. 


Remodeling  of  the  State       123 

The  development  of  political  consolidation  re« 
ceived  also  much  benefit  from  our  renunciation 
on  the  west.  Our  national  progress,  and  there- 
fore our  political  concentration,  got  a  great 
stimulus  in  the  intercourse  with  the  peninsula. 
If  we  had,  however,  meddled  with  peninsular  af- 
fairs too  long,  we  would  not  have  been  able  to 
turn  our  attention  exclusively  to  inner  affairs.  The 
reform  laws  had  just  been  published,  and  they 
required  time  to  be  thoroughly  assimilated.  Un- 
less amended  and  supplemented  according  to 
practical  needs,  those  laws  would  be  mere  black 
on  white,  or  sources  of  social  confusion.  Abso- 
lutely and  without  question  we  were  in  need  of 
peace,  and  that  peace  was  obtained  by  the  evac- 
uation. By  this  peace  the  reform  legislation  could 
work  at  its  best  possible.  If  it  had  not  enhanced 
the  merit  of  the  new  legislation,  at  least  it  de- 
veloped the  benefit  of  the  reform  to  the  full,  and 
prevented  much  evil  which  might  have  arisen  if 
it  had  been  otherwise. 

On  the  other  hand,  the  dark  side  of  the  reform 
legislation  must  not  be  overlooked.  In  reality 
the  Chinese  civilisation  of  the  T'ang  dynasty  was 
one  too  highly  advanced  to  be  successfully  copied 
by  Japan,  a  country  which  was  just  in  its  teens, 
so  to  speak,  so  far  as  development  was  concerned. 
As  a  rule,  the  codification  of  laws  in  any  country 
denotes  a  stage  in  the  progress  of  the  civilisation 
of  that  country,  where  it  became  necessary  to  turn 
back  and  to  systematise  what  had  already  been 


124  History  of  Japan 

attained.  In  other  words,  codification  is  every- 
where a  retrospective  action,  and  before  it  be 
taken  up,  the  civilisation  of  that  particular  coun- 
try should  have  reached  a  stage  considered  the 
highest  possible  by  the  people  of  that  period. 
Otherwise  it  can  do  only  harm.  When  the  codi- 
fication is  far  ahead  of  the  civilisation  the  country 
possesses,  then  that  nation  will  be  obliged  to  take 
very  hurried  steps  in  order  to  overtake  the  stage 
where  the  codification  stands.  It  is  during  these 
headlong  marches  that  the  dislocation  of  the  so- 
cial and  political  structure  of  a  state  generally 
takes  place.  In  short,  it  may  be  called  a  national 
precocity,  highly  dangerous  to  a  healthy  develop- 
ment. The  legislation  of  the  T'ang  dynasty,  in 
truth,  was  even  for  China  of  that  age  too  much 
enlightened,  idealistic,  and  circumstantial  to  be 
worked  with  real  profit  to  the  state.  It  was,  how- 
ever, her  own  creation,  while  ours  was  an  imita- 
tion. It  would  have  been  a  miracle  if  Japan  could 
have  reaped  the  full  harvest  expected  by  a  legis- 
lation nearly  as  advanced  and  as  elaborate  as  that 
of  the  T'ang. 

The  above  remark  is  especially  true  as  regards 
the  military  system.  The  dynasty  of  the  T'ang 
was  in  its  beginning  a  strong  military  power.  Its 
military  system  was  not  bad,  so  long  as  it  was 
worked  by  very  strong  hands.  On  the  whole, 
however,  the  political  regime  of  the  dynasty  was 
not  such  a  one  as  to  favour  the  keeping  up  of  a 
martial  spirit.  After  the  subjugation  of  the  un- 


Remodeling  of  the  State       125 

civilised  tribes  surrounding  the  empire,  the  mar- 
tial spirit  of  the  Chinese  nation  soon  relaxed,  and 
the  country  fell  a  prey  to  the  invading  barbarians 
whom  the  Chinese  were  accustomed  to  despise. 
We  find  in  it  the  exact  counterpart  of  the  Roman 
Empire  destroyed  by  the  Germans.  For  the 
T'ang  dynasty,  it  had  been  better  to  conserve  the 
military  spirit  a  little  longer  in  order  to  protect 
the  civilisation  which  it  had  brought  to  its  zenith. 
With  stronger  reasons,  the  need  of  a  martial 
spirit  ought  to  have  been  emphasised  for  Japan  at 
that  time.  The  Japanese  military  ordinance  of 
the  reform  was  modelled  after  the  Chinese  sys- 
tem, but  of  course  on  a  smaller  scale.  The  chief 
fault,  however,  was  its  over-circumstantiality,  be- 
ing even  more  circumstantial  for  Japan  of  that 
time  than  the  original  system  was  for  China  her- 
self. Before  the  reform  we  had  several  bands 
of  professional  soldiers,  which  could  be  easily 
mobilised.  That  old  system  had  gone.  We  had 
still  to  fight  constantly  against  the  Ainu.  Nay, 
the  warfare  on  that  quarter  was  taken  up  with 
renewed  activity,  and  we  had  to  educate,  to  train 
the  people  who  were  not  at  all  accustomed  to 
military  discipline.  Having  adopted  a  system 
resembling  conscription,  we  were  always  in  need 
of  an  accurate  census.  To  have  an  accurate  cen- 
sus taken  is  a  very  difficult  matter  even  for  a 
highly  civilised  nation.  It  must  have  been  es- 
pecially so  for  Japan.  In  the  reformed  legisla- 
tion the  census  was  the  basis  both  for  the  mili- 


126  History  of  Japan 

tary  service  and  the  land-distribution,  taxation 
connected  with  it.  The  land  distribution  system, 
though  there  might  have  been  some  like  element 
in  the  original  custom  of  Japan,  was  yet  on  the 
whole  another  Chinese  institution  imitated,  very 
circumstantially  again.  Moreover,  though  this  re- 
form seems  to  have  been  enforced  throughout  all 
the  provinces  at  once,  except  the  southernmost 
two,  Ohsumi  and  Satsuma,  in  most  of  the  prov- 
inces the  part  of  the  arable  land  brought  under 
the  new  system  must  have  been  very  limited.  Per- 
haps only  such  land  in  the  neighborhood  of  each 
provincial  capital  might  have  been  distributed 
regularly.  Added  to  that,  the  growth  of  the  pop- 
ulation and  the  increase  of  arable  land  necessi- 
tated a  change  in  the  distribution,  and  in  the  said 
legislation  a  redistribution  every  six  years  was 
provided  for  that  change.  In  order  to  carry  out 
this  redistribution  regularly  and  adequately  a  very 
strong  government  and  wise  management  were 
needed.  Otherwise  either  the  system  would  be 
frustrated,  or  there  would  be  no  improvement  of 
land. 

Considered  from  the  side  of  the  people,  the 
new  legislation  was  not  welcomed  in  all  ways. 
New  taxes  are  generally  wont  to  be  felt  heavier 
than  the  accustomed  ones.  Besides  these  fresh 
imposts,  military  service  was  demanded,  which 
was  quite  a  novel  thing  to  most  of  them.  In  fact, 
their  burden  must  have  been  pretty  heavy,  for 
they  could  not  enjoy  a  durable  peace  at  all,  on 


Remodeling  of  the  State       127 

account  of  the  interminable  warfare  against  the 
Ainu.  Many  began  to  lead  a  roaming  life,  others 
avoided  legal  registration  in  order  to  escape  from 
taxation  and  military  service.  Before  long  the 
fundamental  principle  of  the  grand  reform  col- 
lapsed, and  a  very  expensive  governmental  system 
remained,  which,  too,  gradually  became  difficult 
to  be  kept  up.  A  change  of  regime  seemed  un- 
avoidable. 


CHAPTER  VI 

CULMINATION    OF    THE    NEW    REGIME;    STAGNA- 
TION;  RISE   OF   THE   MILITARY   REGIME 

WHATEVER  be  the  merit  or  the  demerit  of  the 
reform  of  the  Taikwa,  it  was  after  all  an  honour 
to  the  Japanese  nation  that  our  ancestors  ever 
undertook  this  reform.  Not  only  because  they 
were  able  to  provide  thereby  for  the  needs  of  the 
state  of  that  time,  but  because  they  were  bold 
enough,  temerarious  almost,  to  aspire  to  imitate 
the  elaborate  system  of  the  highly  civilised  T'ang. 
When  an  uncivilised  people  comes  into  contact 
with  one  highly  civilised,  it  is  needless  to  say  that 
the  former  is  generally  induced  to  imitate  the 
latter.  This  imitation  is  sometimes  of  a  low  or- 
der, that  is  to  say,  it  often  verges  on  mimicry,  and 
not  infrequently  results  in  the  dwindling  of  racial 
energy  on  the  part  of  the  imitator.  Very  seldom 
does  the  imitation  go  so  far  as  to  adopt  the  po- 
litical institutions  of  the  superior.  If  they,  how- 
ever, had  ventured  impetuously  to  do  so,  the  re- 
sult would  have  been  still  worse,  while  in  the  case 
of  Japan  as  the  imitator  of  China,  it  was  quite 
otherwise.  At  first  sight,  as  China  of  the  T'ang 
was  so  incomparably  far  ahead  of  Japan  of  that 

128 


Culmination  of  New  Regime     129 

time,  it  might  seem  rather  foolish  of  our  fore- 
fathers to  try  straightway  to  imitate  her.  More- 
over, on  the  whole,  the  imitation  ended  in  a  failure 
indeed,  as  should  have  been  expected.  But  the 
original  institutions  of  the  T'ang  itself  proved  a 
failure  in  their  own  home;  hence,  had  the  imita- 
tion of  those  institutions  resulted  in  a  success  with 
us,  it  would  have  aroused  a  great  astonishment. 
The  very  fact  that  our  forefathers  dared  to  imi- 
tate China,  and  did  not  thereby  end  in  losing 
spirit  and  energy,  is  in  itself  a  great  credit  to  the 
reputation  of  the  Japanese  as  a  nation,  for  it 
testifies  that  they  have  been  from  the  first  a  very 
aspiring  nation,  unwitting  how  to  shirk  a  diffi- 
culty. If  it  be  an  honour  to  the  Germans  not  to 
have  withered  before  the  high  civilisation  of  the 
Romans,  the  same  glory  may  be  accorded  to  the 
Japanese  also. 

This  aspiring  spirit  of  the  nation  not  only  made 
itself  felt  in  the  importation  of  Chinese  legisla- 
tion, but  also  in  adopting  her  arts  and  literature. 
As  to  arts,  it  is  difficult  to  ascertain  to  what  de- 
gree of  accomplishment  our  forefathers  had  al- 
ready attained  before  they  came  under  continental 
influence.  Most  probably  it  was  limited  to  some 
simple  designs  drawn  on  household  utensils,  ham- 
wa  or  terracotta-making,  and  to  an  orchestra  of 
rudimentary  instruments.  In  what  may  be  re- 
garded as  literature,  there  were  ballads,  some  of 
which  are  cited  in  the  Nihongi.  Tales  of  heroic 
deeds,  however,  used  to  be  transmitted  from  gen- 


130  History  of  Japan 

eration  to  generation,  not  in  the  form  of  poetry, 
that  is,  not  in  epic,  but  in  oral  prose  narrations. 
In  this  respect  the  ancient  Japanese  fell  far  short 
of  the  Ainu,  who  had  developed  a  highly  epic 
talent  very  early.  To  summarise,  the  ancient  Jap- 
anese apparently  showed  very  few  indications  of 
excelling  other  peoples  in  the  same  stage  of  civili- 
sation as  regards  arts  and  literature. 

In  the  history  of  Japanese  art,  the  introduction 
of  Buddhism  is  a  noteworthy  event.  For,  along 
with  it,  works  of  Chinese  painting  and  sculpture, 
both  pertaining  mainly  to  Buddhist  worship,  were 
sent  as  presents  to  our  imperial  court  by  rulers 
of  the  peninsular  states.  Not  only  articles  of 
virtu,  but  also  artists  themselves,  were  sent  over 
to  this  country  from  the  continent,  who  displayed 
their  skill  in  building  temples,  making  images, 
decorating  shrines  with  fresco  paintings,  and  so 
forth.  Instructed  by  them,  some  gifted  Japanese, 
too,  became  enabled  to  develop  themselves  in  sev- 
eral branches  of  art  and  artistic  industry.  Among 
the  plastic  arts,  painting  was  very  slow  in  making 
progress,  though  a  few  examples  of  that  age  which 
have  remained  to  this  day  are  very  similar  in  style 
to  those  pictures  and  frescoes  recently  excavated 
out  of  the  desert  in  northwestern  China,  and  have 
a  high  historical  value,  giving  us  a  glimpse  of  the 
T'ang  painting.  Architecture  was  perhaps  the  art 
most  patronised  by  the  court.  We  can  see  it  in 
the  construction  of  numerous  palaces.  It  is  a 
well  known  fact  that  before  the  Empress  Gem- 


Culmination  of  New  Regime     131 

myo,  who  was  one  of  the  daughters  of  the  Em- 
peror Tenchi  and  ascended  the  throne  next  after 
the  Emperor  Mommu,  each  successive  emperor 
established  his  court  at  the  place  he  liked,  and  the 
residence  of  the  previous  emperor  was  generally 
abandoned  by  the  next-comer.  From  this  fact  we 
can  imagine  that  all  imperial  palaces  of  those 
times,  if  they  could  be  named  palaces  at  all,  must 
have  been  very  simply  built  and  not  very  impos- 
ing. The  locality,  too,  where  the  residence  was 
established,  was  hardly  apt  to  be  called  a  metro- 
politan city,  although  it  might  have  served  suffi- 
ciently as  a  political  centre  of  the  time.  It  was 
in  the  third  year  of  the  said  empress,  710  A.D., 
that  Nara  was  first  selected  as  the  new  capital 
which  was  to  be  established  in  permanence,  con- 
trary to  the  hitherto  accepted  usage,  and  in  fact 
it  remained  the  country's  chief  city  for  more  than 
eighty  years.  For  the  first  time  a  plan  of  the  city 
was  drawn,  a  plan  very  much  like  a  checkerboard, 
having  been  modelled  after  the  contemporary 
Chinese  metropolis.  The  architectural  style  of 
the  new  palaces  was  also  an  imitation  of  that 
which  then  prevailed  in  China.  The  only  differ- 
ence was  that  wood  was  widely  used  here  instead 
of  brick,  which  was  already  the  chief  building 
material  in  China.  Nobles  were  encouraged  by 
the  court  to  build  tiled  houses  in  place  of  thatched. 
Tiles  began  to  come  into  use  about  that  time,  and 
not  for  roofing  only,  but  for  flooring  also, 
hough  the  checkerboard  plan  of  the  metropoli- 


132  History  of  Japan 

tan  city  of  Nara  might  never  have  been  realised 
in  full  detail,  and  though  among  those  palaces 
once  built  very  few  could  escape  the  frequent  fires 
and  gradual  decay,  yet  judging  from  those  very 
few  which  have  fortunately  survived  to  this  day, 
we  may  fairly  imagine  that  they  must  have  been 
grandiose  in  proportion  to  the  general  condition 
of  the  age.  What  gives  the  best  clue  to  the  social 
life  of  the  higher  classes  of  that  time  is  the  fam- 
ous imperial  treasury,  Sho-so-in,  at  Nara,  now 
opened  to  a  few  specially  honoured  persons  every 
autumn,  when  the  air  is  very  agreeably  dry  in  Ja- 
pan. The  treasury  contains  various  articles  of 
daily  and  ceremonial  use  bequeathed  by  the  Em- 
peror Shomu,  who  was  the  eldest  son  of  the 
Emperor  Mommu  and  died  in  749  A.D.  after  a 
reign  of  twenty-five  years.  Being  so  multifarious 
in  their  kinds,  and  having  been  wonderfully  well 
preserved  in  a  wooden  storehouse,  these  imperial 
treasures,  if  taken  together  with  numerous  con- 
temporary documents  extant  today,  enable  us  to 
give  a  clear  and  accurate  picture  of  the  social  life 
of  that  time. 

As  tatami  matting  was  not  yet  known,  and  the 
houses  occupied  by  men  of  high  circles  had  their 
floors  generally  tiled,  it  may  be  naturally  supposed 
that  the  indoor  life  of  that  time  might  have  been 
nearer  to  that  of  the  Chinese  or  the  European 
than  to  that  of  the  modern  Japanese.  Accord- 
ingly their  outdoor  life,  too,  must  have  been  far 
different  from  that  of  the  present  day.  For  ex- 


Culmination  of  New  Regime     133 

ample,  modern  Japanese  are  fond  of  trimming  or 
arranging  flowers,  putting  two  or  three  twigs  into 
a  small  vase  or  a  short  bamboo  tube,  by  methods 
which,  however  dainty,  are  very  conventional 
after  all.  What  they  rejoice  in  thus  is  to  produce 
a  distorted  semblance  in  miniature  as  tiny  as  pos- 
sible of  a  certain  aspect  of  nature.  In  the  age 
of  the  Nara  emperors,  on  the  contrary,  large 
bunches  of  flowers  must  have  been  used  profusely 
in  decorating  rooms  and  tables,  and  perhaps  to 
strew  on  the  ground.  A  great  many  flower  bas- 
kets, which  are  kept  in  the  said  treasury,  and  are 
of  a  kind  to  the  use  of  which  the  modern  Japanese 
are  not  accustomed,  prove  the  above  assertion. 
Again,  while  modern  Japanese  ladies  play  exclu- 
sively on  the  koto,  a  stringed  musical  instrument 
laid  flat  on  the  tatami  when  played,  Nara  musi- 
cians seem  to  have  played  on  harps,  too,  one  of 
which  also  is  extant  in  the  treasury.  Carpets 
seem  to  have  been  used  not  only  in  covering  the 
floor,  but  were  put  down  on  the  ground  on  occa- 
sions of  some  ceremonial  processions.  Hunting, 
rowing,  and  horsemanship  were  then  the  most 
favourite  pastimes  of  the  nobles.  Unlike  modern 
Japanese  ladies,  women  of  that  time  were  not  be- 
hind men  in  riding.  This  one  fact  will  perhaps 
suffice  to  attest  the  jovial  and  sprightly  character 
of  the  social  life  of  the  Nara  age. 

If  we  turn  to  the  literature  of  the  time,  the 
progress  was  remarkable,  more  easily  perceivable 
than  in  any  other  department.  We  had  now  not 


134  History  of  Japan 

only  ballads  as  before,  but  short  epics  also.  Such 
a  change  must  of  course  be  attributed  to  the  in- 
fluence of  the  Chinese  literature  assiduously  cul- 
tivated. In  the  year  751  a  collection  of  120  select 
poems  in  Chinese,  composed  by  the  64  Nara  court- 
iers since  the  reign  of  the  Emperor  Tenchi,  was 
compiled  and  named  the  Kwal-fu-so.  These 
poems  are  quite  Chinese  in  their  diction,  rhetoric, 
and  strain,  resembling  in  every  way  those  by  first 
rate  Chinese  poets,  and  may  fairly  take  rank 
among  them  without  betraying  any  sign  of  imi- 
tation or  pasticcio.  If  we  consider  that  no  kind 
of  Japanese  literature  in  its  own  mother  tongue 
could  be  committed  to  writing,  save  only  in  Chi- 
nese ideographs,  the  influence  of  the  Chinese  lit- 
erature, which  flourished  so  rampantly  at  that 
time  in  Japan,  cannot  be  estimated  too  highly. 
No  wonder  that,  parallel  to  the  compilation  of 
the  Chinese  poems,  a  collection  of  Japanese 
poems,  beginning  with  that  of  the  Emperor  Yu- 
ryaku  in  the  latter  half  of  the  fifth  century,  was 
also  undertaken.  This  collection  is  the  celebrated 
Man-yo-shu.  The  long  and  short  poems  selected, 
however,  were  not  restricted,  as  in  the  case  of 
the  Kwai-fu-so,  to  those  by  courtiers  only.  On 
the  contrary,  it  contained  many  poems  sung  by 
the  common  people,  into  which  no  whit  of  Chinese 
civilisation  could  have  peneterated.  The  Man-yo- 
shuf  therefore,  is  held  by  Japanese  historians  to 
be  a  very  useful  source-book  as  regards  the  social 
history  of  the  time. 


Culmination  of  New  Regime     135 

ft  is  hardly  to  be  denied  that  some  of  the  Jap- 
anese poems  of  that  age  were  evidently  composed 
and  committed  to  writing  with  the  object  of  being 
read  and  not  sung,  as  almost  all  modern  Japan- 
ese poems  are  accustomed  to  be.  There  were 
still  many  others  at  the  same  time  which  must 
have  been  composed  from  the  first  in  order  only 
to  be  sung.  Men  of  the  age,  of  high  as  well  as 
of  low  rank,  were  singularly  fond  of  singing,  gen- 
erally accompanied  by  dancing.  Many  pathetic 
love  stories  are  told  about  those  gatherings  of 
singers  and  dancers,  the  utagakl,  which  literally 
means  the  singing  hedge  or  ring.  This  kind  of 
gleeful  gathering  used  to  take  place  on  a  street, 
in  an  open  field,  or  on  a  hill-top.  In  one  of  the 
utagaki  held  in  the  city  of  Nara,  it  is  said  that 
members  of  the  imperial  family  took  part  too, 
shoulder  to  shoulder  with  citizens  and  denizens 
of  very  modest  standing.  As  to  dances  of  the 
time  there  might  have  been  some  styles  original 
to  the  Japanese  themselves.  At  the  same  time 
there  were  to  be  found  many  dances  of  foreign 
origin,  imported,  together  with  their  musical  ac- 
companiments, from  China  and  the  peninsular 
states.  These  dances  have  long  ago  been  entirely 
lost  in  their  original  homes,  so  that  they  can  be 
witnessed  only  in  our  country  now.  A  strange  sur- 
vival of  ancient  culture  indeed !  Of  course  even 
in  our  country  those  exotic  and  antiquated  dances 
do  not  conform  to  the  modern  taste,  and  on  that 
account  are  not  frequently  performed.  They 


136  History  of  Japan 

have  been  handed  down  through  many  genera- 
tions, however,  by  the  band  of  court  musicians, 
and  at  present  these  dances,  dating  back  to  the 
T'ang  dynasty,  are  performed  only  at  certain  ar- 
chaic court  ceremonies. 

From  what  has  been  stated  above,  one  can  well 
imagine  that,  in  certain  respects,  Japan  of  the 
Nara  age  had  much  in  common  with  Greece  just 
about  the  time  of  the  Persian  invasion.  In  both 
it  was  an  age  in  which  a  vigorous  race  reached 
the  first  flourishing  stage  of  civilisation,  when  the 
national  energy  began  to  be  devoted  to  aesthetic 
pursuits,  but  was  nevertheless  not  yet  enervated 
by  over-enlightenment.  Whatever  those  Japanese 
set  their  minds  on  doing,  they  set  about  it  very 
briskly  and  cheerfully,  nor  was  their  enthusiasm 
dampened  by  any  fear  of  probable  mishap.  Be- 
ing naive,  and  therefore  ignorant  of  obstacles  in- 
evitable to  the  progress  of  a  nation,  they  always 
soared  higher  and  higher,  full  of  resplendent 
hope.  How  eager  they  were  to  essay  at  great 
things  may  be  conjectured  from  the  size  of  the 
Daibutsu,  the  colossal  statue  of  Buddha,  in  the 
temple  of  the  Todaiji  at  Nara.  The  statue,  more 
than  fifty-three  feet  in  height,  was  finished  in  749 
A.D.  after  several  successive  failures  encountered 
and  overcome  during  four  years,  and  is  the  largest 
that  was  ever  made  in  Japan.  That  such  a  great 
statue  was  not  only  designed,  but  was  executed  by 
Japanese  sculptors,  whether  their  origin  be  of 
immigrant  stock  or  not,  should  be  considered  a 


Culmination  of  New  Regime     137 

great  credit  to  the  enterprising  spirit  and  the  ar- 
tistic acquirements  of  the  Japanese  of  that  epoch. 
Such  a  stride  in  the  national  progress,  however, 
was  only  attained  at  the  expense  of  other  quarters 
not  at  all  insignificant.  On  the  one  hand,  it  is  true 
that  Japan  benefited  immensely  by  having  had  as 
her  neighbor  such  a  highly  civilised  country  as 
China  of  the  T'ang.  On  the  other  hand,  it  should 
not  be  overlooked  that  it  was  a  great  misfortune 
to  us  that  we  had  such  an  over-shadowingly  in- 
fluential neighbour.  China  of  that  time  was  a 
nation  too  far  in  advance  of  us  to  encourage  us  to 
venture  to  compete  with  her.  She  left  us  no  choice 
but  to  imitate  her.  Who  can  blame  the  Japanese 
of  the  Nara  age  if  they  thought  it  the  most  ur- 
gent business  to  run  after  China,  and  try  to  over- 
take her  in  the  same  track  down  which  they  knew 
the  Chinese  had  progressed  a  long  way  already? 
The  glory  and  splendour  of  the  Chinese  civilisa- 
tion of  the  T'ang  was  too  enticing  for  them  to  turn 
their  eyes  aside  and  seek  a  yet  untrodden  route. 
That  they  strove  simply  to  imitate  and  rejoiced 
in  behaving  as  though  they  were  real  Chinese 
should  not  be  a  matter  for  astonishment  in  the 
least.  Perhaps  it  may  be  said  to  their  credit  that 
the  imitation  was  exquisite  and  the  resemblance 
accurate.  One  of  the  brilliant  students  then  sent 
abroad  remained  there  for  eighteen  years,  and 
after  his  return  to  this  country  he  eventually  be- 
came a  prominent  minister  of  the  Japanese  gov- 
ernment, notwithstanding  his  humble  origin,  a 


138  History  of  Japan 

promotion  very  rare  in  those  days.  Certain 
branches  of  Chinese  literature,  many  refined  cere- 
monies, various  kinds  of  Chinese  pastimes,  many 
things  Chinese,  useful  and  beneficial  to  our  people, 
to  be  found  in  Japan  even  to  this  day  have  been 
attributed  to  his  importation.  Another  scholar 
who  was  obliged  to  stay  in  China  for  more  than 
fifty  years,  distinguished  himself  in  the  literary 
circles  of  the  Chinese  metropolis,  was  taken  into 
the  service  of  a  T'ang  emperor  as  a  very  high 
official  under  a  Chinese  name,  and  at  last  died 
there  with  a  life-long  yearning  for  his  native 
country. 

Such  an  imitation,  however  useful  it  might  have 
proved  in  behalf  of  our  country  at  large,  could  not 
fail  to  exact  from  the  nation  still  young,  as  Japan 
was  at  that  time,  a  tremendous  overexertion  of 
their  mental  faculties.  Having  been  strained  to 
the  last  extremity  of  tension,  the  Japanese  became 
naturally  exceedingly  nervous.  From  a  lack  of 
patience  to  observe  quietly  the  maturing  of  the 
effect  of  a  stack  of  laws  and  regulations  already 
enacted,  they  hastily  repudiated  some  of  them  as 
if  they  were  of  no  use,  and  replaced  them  by  new 
laws  quite  as  confounding  as  the  previous  ones, 
and  thus  legislations  contradictory  in  principle 
rapidly  succeeded  one  another,  none  of  them  hav- 
ing had  time  enough  to  be  experimented  with  ex- 
haustively. Although  along  with  this  rage  for 
imitation  there  was  a  strong  countercurrent,  very 
conservative,  which  struggled  incessantly  to  pre- 


Culmination  of  New  Regime     139 

serve  what  was  original  and  at  the  same  time 
precious,  yet  to  determine  which  was  worthy  of 
preservation  was  a  matter  of  bewilderment  to  the 
contemporaries,  for  they  were  averse  from  com- 
ing into  any  collision  with  things  Chinese  to  which 
they  were  not  at  all  loth.  Excitement  and  irrita- 
tion, the  natural  result  of  this  topsyturvy  state  of 
things,  can  best  be  estimated  by  the  belief  in  ridic- 
ulous auspices.  The  discovery  of  a  certain  plant 
or  animal,  of  rare  colour  or  of  unusual  shape,  gen- 
erally caused  by  deformities,  was  enthusiastically 
welcomed  as  an  augury  of  a  long  and  peaceful 
reign,  and  was  wont  to  call  forth  some  lengthy 
imperial  proclamation  in  praise  of  the  govern- 
ment. Bounties  were  munificently  distributed  to 
commemorate  the  happy  occasion,  discoverers  of 
these  rarities  were  amply  rewarded,  criminals 
were  released  or  had  the  hardships  of  their  servi- 
tude ameliorated.  Naturally,  many  of  these  aug- 
uries proved  vain,  and  only  served  as  a  prop  to 
sustain  the  self-conceit  of  responsible  ministers, 
or  as  a  means  of  soothing  general  discontent,  if 
such  discontent  could  ever  be  manifested  in  those 
"good  old  times."  The  greatest  evil  of  this  fat- 
uous hankering  for  sources  of  selfsatisfaction  was 
the  throng  of  rogues  and  sycophants  thereby  pro- 
duced who  vied  with  one  another  in  contriving 
false  or  specious  rarities  and  begging  imperial 
favour  for  them.  Superstitions  of  this  kind  would 
have  suited  well  enough  a  people  quite  uncivilised, 
or  too  civilised  to  care  for  rational  things.  As 


140  History  of  Japan 

for  the  Japanese,  a  people  already  on  the  way 
of  youthful  progress,  radiant  with  hope,  belief  in 
auspices  was  but  an  intolerable  fetter.  If  viewed 
from  this  single  point,  therefore,  the  regime  ought 
to  have  been  reformed  by  any  means. 

Another  and  still  greater  evil  of  the  age  was 
the  clashing  of  interests  between  the  different 
classes  of  people.  Chinese  civilisation  could  per- 
meate only  the  powerful,  the  higher  classes. 
Though  the  chieftains  and  lords,  who  had  been 
mighty  in  the  former  regime,  were  bereft  of  their 
power  by  the  appropriation  of  their  lands  and 
people,  a  new  class  of  nobles  soon  arose  in  place 
of  them,  and  among  the  latter  the  descendants  of 
Nakatomi-no-Kamatari  were  the  most  prominent. 
This  sagacious  minister,  of  whom  I  have  already 
spoken  in  the  foregoing  chapters,  was  rewarded, 
in  consideration  of  his  meritorious  services  in  the 
destruction  of  the  Soga,  as  well  as  in  the  execution 
of  the  most  radical  reform  Japan  has  ever 
known,  with  the  office  of  the  most  intimate  ad- 
visory minister  of  the  Emperor,  and  was  granted 
the  honourable  family  appellation  of  Fujiwara. 
His  descendants,  who  have  ramified  into  innum- 
erable branches  and  include  more  than  half  of  the 
court-nobles  of  the  present  day,  enjoyed  ever-in- 
creasing imperial  favour  generation  after  genera- 
tion. What  marked  especially  the  sudden  growth 
of  the  family  position  was  the  elevation  of  one 
of  the  grand-daughters  of  the  minister  to  be  the 
imperial  consort  of  the  Emperor  Shomu.  For 


Culmination  of  New  Regime     141 

several  centuries  prior  to  this,  it  had  been  the 
custom  to  choose  the  empress  from  the  daughters 
of  the  families  of  the  blood  imperial.  An  off- 
spring of  a  subject,  however  high  her  father's 
rank  might  be,  was  not  recognised  as  qualified  to 
that  distinction.  The  privilege,  which  the  Fuji- 
wara  family  was  now  exceptionally  honoured 
with,  meant  that  only  this  family  should  have 
hereafter  its  place  next  to  the  imperial,  so  that 
none  other  would  be  allowed  to  vie  with  it  any 
more.  The  Fujiwara  became  thus  associated 
with  the  imperial  family  more  and  more  closely, 
and  affairs  of  state  gradually  came  to  be  trans- 
acted as  if  they  were  the  family  business  of  the 
Fujiwara.  The  worst  evil  of  this  aggrandisement 
was  only  prevented  by  the  incessant  and  inveterate 
internecine  feuds  within  the  clan  itself,  which 
eventually  served  to  put  a  bridle  on  the  audacity 
and  ambition  of  any  one  of  the  members. 

This  influential  family  of  the  Fujiwara,  to- 
gether with  a  few  other  nobles  of  different  lineage, 
including  scions  of  the  imperial  family,  monopo- 
lised almost  all  the  wealth  and  power  in  the  coun- 
try. They  kept  a  great  number  of  slaves  in  their 
households,  and  held  vast  tracts  of  private  es- 
tates, too.  As  to  the  land,  they  developed  and 
cultivated  the  fields  by  the  hands  of  their  slaves 
or  leased  them  for  rent.  Besides,  they  turned  into 
private  properties  those  lands  of  which  they  were 
legally  allowed  only  the  usufruct.  By  the  reform 
legislation,  the  usufruct  of  a  public  land  was 


142  History  of  Japan 

granted  to  one  who  did  much  service  to  the  state, 
but  the  duration  of  the  right  was  limited  to  his 
life  or  at  most  to  that  of  his  grand-children. 
None  was  permitted  to  hold  the  public  land  as 
a  hereditary  possession  without  time  limit.  It 
was  by  the  infringement  of  these  regulations  that 
arbitrary  occupation  was  realised. 

Another  means  of  the  aggrandisement  of  the 
estates  of  the  nobles  was  a  fraudulent  practice  on 
the  part  of  the  common  people.  Those  who  were 
independent  landowners  or  legal  leaseholders  of 
public  lands  were  liable  to  taxation,  as  may  be 
supposed,  and  as  the  taxes  and  imposts  of  that 
time  were  pretty  heavy,  those  landholders  thought 
it  wiser  to  alienate  the  land  formally  by  present- 
ing it  to  some  influential  nobles  or  some  Buddhist 
temples,  which  came  to  be  privileged,  or  asserted 
the  right  to  be  exempted  from  the  burden  of  taxa- 
tion. In  reality,  of  course,  those  people  continued 
to  hold  the  land  as  before,  and  were  very  glad  to 
see  their  burden  much  alleviated,  for  the  tribute 
which  they  were  obliged  to  pay  to  the  nominal 
landlord  by  the  transaction  must  have  been  less 
than  the  regular  taxes  which  they  owed  to  the 
government.  Moreover,  by  this  presentation 
they  could  enter  under  the  protection  of  those 
nobles  or  temples,  which  was  useful  for  them  in 
defying  the  law,  should  need  arise.  The  number 
of  independent  landholders  thus  gradually  dimin- 
ished by  the  renunciation  of  the  legal  right  and 
duty  on  the  part  of  the  holders,  and  consequently 


Culmination  of  New  Regime     143 

the  amount  of  the  levied  tax  grew  less  and  less. 
The  state,  however,  could  not  curtail  the  necessary 
amount  of  the  expenditure  on  that  account.  The 
dignity  of  the  court  had  to  be  upheld  higher  and 
higher,  state  ceremonies  performed  regularly,  and 
the  national  defence  was  not  to  be  neglected  for 
a  moment.  All  these  were  causes  which  necessi- 
tated a  continual  increase  of  revenue.  In  order 
to  fill  up  the  deficit,  the  burden  was  transferred, 
doubled  or  trebled,  to  those  who  remained  longer 
honest,  so  that  it  soon  became  quite  unbearable 
for  them  also.  The  hardships  borne  by  the  law- 
abiding  people  of  that  time  could  be  compared  to 
those  of  the  Huguenots  who,  faithful  to  their  con- 
fession, were  impoverished  by  the  dragonnade.  In 
this  way,  more  and  more  people  were  induced  to 
give  up  their  independent  stand  and  take  shelter 
under  the  shield  of  mighty  protectors.  Military 
service,  too,  was  another  grievance  for  the  com- 
mon people.  They  had  to  serve  in  the  western 
islands  against  continental  invaders,  or  on  the 
northern  frontier  against  the  Ainu.  Not  only  did 
they  thereby  risk  their  lives,  but  sometimes  they 
were  obliged  to  procure  their  provisions  at  their 
own  cost,  for  the  government  could  not  afford  it. 
If  those  people  would  once  renounce  their  right  of 
independence  and  turn  voluntary  vagabonds,  then 
they  could  at  once  elude  the  military  duty  and  the 
tax.  No  wonder  this  was  possible  since  it  was 
an  age  in  which  the  national  consciousness  was 
not  yet  developed  enough  to  teach  them  implicitly 


144  History  of  Japan 

that  it  was  their  duty  to  be  ready  to  expose  them- 
selves to  any  peril  for  the  sake  of  the  state.  This 
underhand  transaction  is  one  exceedingly  analo- 
gous to  the  process  in  which  Prankish  allod-hold- 
ers  gradually  turned  their  lands  into  fiefs,  in  or- 
der to  escape  taxation  and  at  the  same  time  obtain 
protection  from  influential  persons.  If  one 
should  think  that  the  census,  which  was  ordained 
in  the  reform  law  to  take  place  periodically,  would 
prove  efficient  to  check  the  increase  of  these  out- 
casts, it  would  be  a  great  mistake  in  forming  a 
just  conception  of  these  ages.  Soon  after  the 
enactment  of  the  census  law,  it  ceased  to  be  reg- 
ularly executed,  and  even  while  the  law  was  ob- 
served with  punctuality,  the  extent  to  which  it  was 
applied  must  have  been  very  limited.  It  was  at 
such  a  time  that  the  great  statue  of  Buddha  was 
completed  in  the  city  of  Nara,  and  ten  thousand 
priests  were  invited  to  take  part  in  a  grand  cere- 
mony of  rejoicing. 

The  palaces  and  temples  in  Nara,  as  well  as 
the  imperial  mansions  and  the  abodes  of  nobles 
scattered  about  the  country,  seem  in  a  great  meas- 
ure to  have  been  solidly  and  magnificently  built, 
with  their  roofs  covered  with  tiles  as  beforemen- 
tioned.  The  nobles  who  had  no  permanent  resi- 
dence in  the  city,  had  as  their  bounden  duty  to  pay 
certain  duty  visits,  as  it  were,  to  the  imperial  court, 
and  learn  there  how  to  refine  their  country  life  by 
adopting  the  metropolitan  ways  of  living.  Some 
of  the  household  furniture  used  by  the  nobles  and 


Culmination  of  New  Regime     145 

members  of  the  imperial  family  was  bought  in 
China.  The  education  of  the  higher  classes  en- 
abled them  not  only  to  read  and  write  the  literary 
Chinese  with  ease  and  fluency,  but  to  behave  cor- 
rectly according  to  Chinese  etiquette,  as  if  they 
were  themselves  genuine  Chinese.  These  are  the 
bright  aspects  of  the  history  of  the  Nara  age. 
Around  the  metropolitan  city,  however,  and  those 
aristocratic  abodes  in  the  country,  swarmed  the 
impoverished  people,  utterly  uneducated,  receiv- 
ing no  benefit  whatever  from  the  imported  Chi- 
nese civilisation.  Here  one  might  perhaps  ask, 
could  not  Buddhism  give  them  any  solace  at  all? 
Not  in  the  least.  The  shrewd  Buddhists,  having 
seen  that  Shintoism  had  been  strangely  tenacious 
in  resisting  the  propagation  of  their  creed  not- 
withstanding its  lack  of  system  and  dogma,  wisely 
invented  a  clever  method  to  keep  a  firm  hold  even 
on  the  conservative  mind  by  identifying  the  patron 
deities  of  Buddhism  with  the  national  gods  of  our 
country.  It  resembles  in  some  ways  the  device  of 
the  early  Christian  missionaries  in  northern  Eur- 
ope, who  tried  to  blend  Teutonic  mythology  with 
Christian  legend.  The  only  difference  between 
them  is  that  those  missionaries  did  not  go  so  far 
as  our  Buddhist  priests  did.  This  device  of  the 
Buddhists  was  crowned  with  complete  success. 
By  this  identification  Buddhism  became  a  religion 
which  could  be  embraced  without  any  palpable 
contradiction  to  Shintoism,  in  other  words,  with 
no  risk  of  injuring  the  national  traditions.  Nay, 


146  History  of  Japan 

it  came  to  be  considered  that  Shintoism  was  not 
only  compatible  with  Buddhism,  but  also  subserv- 
ient to  its  real  interests.  Thus  we  find  almost 
everywhere  a  Shinto  shrine  standing  within  the 
same  precincts  as  a  Buddhist  temple,  the  Shinto 
deity  being  regarded  as  the  patron  of  the  Budd- 
hist creed  and  its  place  of  worship.  This  strange 
combination  continued  to  be  looked  upon  as  a  mat- 
ter of  course  until  the  Restoration  of  Meidji, 
when  the  revival  of  the  imperial  prerogative  was 
accompanied  by  a  reaction  against  Buddhism,  and 
the  purification  of  Shintoism  from  its  Buddhistic 
admixture  was  enthusiastically  undertaken.  On 
account  of  the  dubiosity  of  their  religious  char- 
acter, many  finely  built  temples  and  images  of  ex- 
quisite art  were  ruthlessly  demolished,  much  to 
the  regret  of  art  connoisseurs. 

In  the  year  794,  the  Emperor  Kwammu  trans- 
ferred his  capital  to  the  province  of  Yamashiro, 
and  gave  it  the  felicitous  appellation  of  Hei-an, 
which  means  peace  and  tranquility.  The  place, 
however,  has  been  commonly  designated  by  the 
name  of  Kyoto,  which  means  literally  the  capital, 
and  continued  henceforth  to  be  the  centre  of  Japan 
for  more  than  one  thousand  years.  There  might 
have  been  several  motives  which  caused  the  capi- 
tal to  be  removed  from  Nara.  The  valley,  in 
which  the  old  capital  was  situated,  might  have 
been  too  narrow  to  allow  free  expansion,  or  it 
might  have  been  found  inconveniently  situated  as 
regards  communications.  Party  strife  among  the 


Culmination  of  New  Regime     147 

nobles  might  have  been  another  reason.  At  any 
rate  the  choice ~of  The ;  hew  site  cannot  be  regarded 
as  a  mistake.  Kyoto  is  better  connected  with 
Naniwa,  Osaka  of  the  present  day,  than  Nara 
was  at  that  time.  From  Kyoto  one  was  able  to 
reach  the  port  within  a  few  hours,  by  going  down 
the  river  Yodo  by  boat.  There  is  no  natural  hin- 
drance on  the  way  like  the  mountain  chain  which 
divides  the  two  provinces  of  Yamato  and  Settsu. 
At  the  same  time,  Kyoto  is  quite  near  to  Ohtsu, 
the  gate  toward  the  eastern  provinces,  and  those 
selfsame  provinces  were  the  regions  which  had 
for  long  been  engrossing  the  attention  of  far- 
sighted  contemporary  statesmen. 

The  energetic  Emperor  Kwammu  undertook 
the  conquest  of  the  Ainu  with  a  renewed  vigour. 
That  part  of  the  Ainu  country  which  faced  the  Sea 
of  Japan  was  already  made  a  province  before 
the  accession  of  that  sovereign.  In  the  Emperor's 
reign  the  success  of  the  Japanese  arms  was  car- 
ried far  into  the  Ainu  land  by  the  victorious  gen- 
eral Sakanouye-no-Tamuramaro.  The  boundary 
of  the  province  of  Mutsu,  the  region  facing  the 
Pacific,  was  pushed  northward  into  the  middle 
of  the  present  province  of  Rikuchu.  Enterprising 
Japanese  settled  in  those  lands  or  travelled  to  and 
fro  in  quest  of  trade.  The  Ainu,  however,  was 
not  completely  subjugated,  nor  was  he  easily 
driven  away  out  of  the  main  island.  Beyond 
Shirakawa,  the  place  which  had  for  a  long  time 
been  considered  the  northernmost  limit  of  civilised 


148  History  of  Japan 

Japan,  numerous  hordes  of  half-domesticated 
Ainu  continued  to  reside  as  before.  As  the  result 
of  the  constant  contact  with  the  Japanese,  they 
were  slowly  influenced  by  the  civilisation  which 
the  latter  had  already  acquired.  They  could  con- 
solidate their  forces  under  the  leadership  of  some 
valiant  chiefs,  and  frequently  dared  to  rise  against 
oppressive  governors  sent  from  Kyoto.  In  short, 
they  proved  to  be  intractable  as  ever,  so  that 
more  than  three  centuries  were  still  necessary  to 
put  their  land  in  the  same  status  as  the  ordinary 
Japanese  province.  The  interminable  wars  and 
skirmishes  waged  thenceforth  between  the  two 
races  were  one  of  the  principal  causes  of  the 
financial  embarrassment  of  the  government  at 
Kyoto,  and  finally  undermined  its  power. 

The  imperial  family  and  the  nobles  lived  their 
lives  at  Kyoto,  largely  as  they  were  wont  to  do 
at  the  old  capital  of  Nara.  The  family  of  the 
Fujiwara  was  ever  as  ascendant  as  before.  Abund- 
ant court  intrigues  were  now  not  the  outcome 
of  the  antagonism  between  the  different  great  fam- 
ilies, but  of  the  internal  quarrels  within  the  single 
family  of  the  Fujiwara,  not  infrequently  inter- 
mingled with  disputes  concerning  the  imperial 
succession.  All  the  high  and  lucrative  offices  were 
monopolised  by  the  members  of  that  able  and 
ambitious  family.  Most  of  the  empresses  of  the 
successive  sovereigns  were  their  daughters.  The 
regency  became  the  hereditary  function  of  the 
family,  and  they  filled  the  office  one  after  another 


Culmination  of  New  Regime     149 

without  any  regard  to  the  age  or  health  condi- 
tions of  the  reigning  emperor.  It  was  very  rare 
indeed  for  members  of  families  other  than  the 
Fujiwara  to  be  promoted  to  one  of  the  three  great 
ministerships.  Even  scions  of  the  imperial  fam- 
ily had  to  yield  to  them  in  power  and  position. 

Their  literary  attainments  were  generally  high, 
being  but  little  inferior  to  those  of  the  profes- 
sional literati,  who  formed  a  class  of  secondary 
courtiers,  and  proceeded  generally  from  the  fam- 
ilies of  the  Sugawara,  Kiyowara,  and  so  forth. 
Ships  with  ambassadors,  students,  and  priests 
were  sent  by  them  to  China  of  the  T'ang  as  be- 
fore. For  they  still  burned  with  an  ardent  de- 
sire to  get  more  and  more  knowledge  about  things 
Chinese.  Their  Sinicomania  was  carried  indeed 
to  such  an  excess  that  the  physiognomical  type  of 
the  Chinese  came  to  be  regarded  as  the  finest 
ideal  of  mankind,  and  any  Japanese  who  was  of 
that  type  was  adored  as  having  the  ideal  features. 

The  despatch  of  the  official  ships  continued  as 
in  the  days  of  Nara,  not  at  regular  intervals,  but 
generally  once  during  the  reign  of  every  Japanese 
emperor.  The  impetuous  imitation  of  Chinese 
legislation  slackened  in  fact,  for  in  that  respect 
we  had  already  borrowed  enough.  The  connec- 
tion of  our  country  with  China  began  to  take  the 
form  of  ordinary  international  intercourse,  with 
due  reciprocation  of  courtesies.  There  remained, 
however,  some  need  of  keeping  pace  with  the  po- 
litical changes  in  China,  and  we  could  not  make 


150  History  of  Japan 

up  our  minds  to  refrain  altogether  from  peeping 
into  the  land  which  we  held  to  be  far  above  our 
country  in  civilisation.  The  last  of  such  an  em- 
bassy was  that  sent  in  the  year  843.  Half  a  cen- 
tury afterwards  another  squadron  was  ordered  to 
be  despatched,  and  Sugawara-no-Michizane  was 
appointed  ambassador.  But  the  squadron  was 
never  really  sent.  For  at  that  time  the  long 
dynasty  of  the  T'ang  was  just  drawing  near  to  its 
end,  and  the  civil  war  of  a  century's  duration  was 
beginning.  There  was  no  more  any  stable  gov- 
ernment in  China  with  which  we  could  communi- 
cate. Moreover,  there  was  danger  to  be  feared 
that  we  might  be  somehow  embroiled  in  the  anar- 
chical disturbances  in  the  Middle  Kingdom.  The 
ambassador,  Michizane  himself,  was  also  of  the 
opinion  that  little  was  to  be  gained  by  the  despatch 
of  the  intended  squadron,  and  dissuaded  the  gov- 
ernment from  sending  it. 

Japan  now  entered  into  the  stage  of  the  assimi- 
lation of  the  alien  culture  already  imported  in 
full.  Hitherto  we  had  been  too  busy  to  make 
discrimination  among  those  things  Chinese  which 
we  had  engulfed  at  random.  Now  we  had  to 
make  clear  which  of  them  was  suited,  and  how 
others  were  to  be  modified  in  order  to  make  them 
useful  to  our  country.  In  short,  we  had  to  di- 
gest; or  to  speak  by  the  book,  we  had  to  ruminate 
on  what  we  had  already  taken.  After  all  it  must 
have  been  a  wise  policy  to  put  a  stop  to  the  state 
of  national  nervousness  caused  by  the  incessant 


Culmination  of  New  Regime     151 

introduction  of  foreign  laws,  manners,  customs, 
things.  The  infiltration,  however  superficial  it 
might  have  been,  left  an  ineradicable  influence  ow- 
ing to  the  continual  process  of  several  centuries. 
The  spirit  of  the  culture  of  the  dominant  class 
became  essentially  Chinese.  Though  the  saying, 
"Japanese  spirit  and  Chinese  erudition"  was 
henceforth  fondly  spoken  of,  the  Japanese  spirit 
itself  was  not  yet  clearly  defined,  and  did  not  enter 
into  the  full  consciousness  of  the  nation.  What 
the  ruling  nobles,  who  had  imbibed  the  Chinese 
spirit  already  too  deeply,  could  do  was  only  to 
discard  things  which  became  superannuated  and 
untenable. 

The  characteristics  of  the  age  of  rumination 
may  be  discerned  in  the  history  of  our  literature 
from  the  latter  half  of  the  ninth  century  to  the 
beginning  of  the  eleventh.  At  first,  while  literary 
works  were  still  being  written  almost  exclusively 
in  Chinese,  we  begin  to  find  in  their  style  traces 
of  Japanisation,  becoming  more  and  more  marked 
as  time  goes  on.  Along  with  works  in  Chinese, 
those  in  our  own  language  began  to  appear, 
though  very  sparsely  at  first.  Then  gradually 
these  attempts  in  the  vernacular  increased,  so  that 
eventually  the  end  of  the  tenth  century  became 
the  culminating  period  of  the  classical  Japanese 
literature.  Religious  and  scholastic  works  were 
written  in  Chinese  as  before.  August  and  cere- 
monial documents  continued  to  be  composed  in 
the  same  language.  Chinese  poetry  was  as  much 


152  History  of  Japan 

in  vogue  among  the  courtiers  as  ever.  At  the 
same  time,  however,  numerous  works  in  Japanese 
now  appeared  in  the  form  of  chronicles,  diaries, 
short  stories,  novels,  satirical  sketches,  and  poems. 
What  was  most  remarkable,  however,  is  that  the 
greater  part  of  those  works  was  written  not  by 
men,  but  by  court  ladies.  Among  the  ladies,  who 
by  their  wit  and  literary  genius  brightened  the 
court  of  the  Emperor  Ichijo,  stood  at  the  fore- 
front Murasaki-shikibu,  the  author  of  the  Genji- 
monogatari,  and  Sei-Shonagon,  the  author  of 
Ma  kura-n  o-  s  6s  hi . 

That  these  intelligent  and  talented  court  ladies 
were  versed  in  Chinese  literature  can  be  perceived 
in  what  they  wrote  in  Japanese.  In  other  words, 
the  culture,  essentially  Chinese,  of  the  high  circles 
of  society  was  not  monopolised  by  the  men  only, 
but  shared  by  the  women.  And  these  court  ladies 
were  fairly  emancipated,  and  far  from  being  sub- 
ject to  the  caprices  of  men.  It  is  often  argued 
that  the  progress  of  a  country  can  be  measured 
rightly  by  the  social  status  of  the  women  in  it.  If 
that  be  true,  Japan  at  the  beginning  of  the  elev- 
enth century  must  have  been  very  highly  civilised. 
And  it  was  really  so  in  a  certain  sense.  This 
civilised  Japan,  however,  was  confined  to  the  very 
narrow  circle  in  Kyoto,  and  for  that  very  circle 
the  Chinese  enlightenment  penetrated  too  deep. 
The  great  nobles  of  the  Fujiwara  family  were  too 
refined,  too  effeminate  for  holders  of  the  helm  of 


Rise  of  the  Military  Regime    153 

the  state,  the  young  state  in  which  there  was  still 
much  to  be  done  vigorously. 

The  Ainu  on  the  north  were  menacing  as  ever. 
For  though  they  had  lost  in  extent  of  territory, 
they  had  gained  in  civilisation.  The  demand  of 
the  state  was  for  energetic  ministers  as  well  as 
for  valiant  warriors.  The  high-class  nobles  be- 
came unfitted  for  both,  and  especially  for  the 
rough  life  of  the  latter.  As  generals,  therefore, 
not  to  speak  of  officers,  were  employed  men  of 
comparatively  low  rank  among  the  courtiers.  In 
this  way  military  affairs  became  the  hereditary 
profession  of  certain  families  which  happened  to 
be  engaged  in  them  most  frequently,  and  were 
at  last  monopolised  by  them.  As  the  government, 
however,  could  not  and  did  not  care  to  provide 
these  generals  with  a  sufficiency  of  soldiers,  pro- 
visions, and  armaments,  they  were  obliged  to  help 
themselves  to  those  necessaries,  just  like  the  lead- 
ers of  the  landsknechts  in  Europe.  The  intimate 
relation  of  vassalage,  not  legally  recognised  of 
course,  thus  arose  between  those  generals  and 
their  private  soldiers,  and  as  this  condition  lasted 
for  a  considerable  time,  the  relationship  became 
hereditary.  Needless  to  say  that  such  a  condition 
of  affairs  was  naturally  set  up  in  the  provinces, 
where  the  Ainu  was  still  powerful  enough  to  raise 
frequent  disturbances.  On  account  of  the  fact 
that  these  generals  and  their  relatives  were  often 
appointed  to  the  governorship  of  distant  prov- 
inces, where  the  influence  of  the  Kyoto  govern- 


154  History  of  Japan 

ment  was  too  weak  to  check  their  arbitrary  con- 
duct, the  same  connection  of  vassalage  was 
formed  there  also  between  them  and  the  provin- 
cials who  were  in  need  of  their  protection.  Not 
only  did  they  thus  become  masters  of  bands  of 
strong  and  warlike  people,  but  they  also  appro- 
priated to  themselves  by  sundry  means  vast  tracts 
of  land,  and  fattened  their  purses  thereby.  That 
they  did  not  venture  at  once  to  overthrow  the 
political  regime  upheld  by  the  nobles  of  the  Fuji- 
wara  family  may  be  accounted  for  by  the  time- 
honoured  prestfge  of  the  latter.  For  a  long  while 
those  warriors  went  even  so  far  as  to  do  homage 
to  this  or  that  noble  of  the  Fujiwara  as  his 
vassals,  and  served  as  tools  to  this  or  that  party 
in  court  intrigues.  The  courtiers,  who  employed 
them  as  their  instruments,  had  no  apprehension 
that  those  military  men,  subservient  for  the  mo- 
ment to  their  needs,  would  one  day  turn  into  rivals, 
powerful  enough  in  the  long  run  to  overturn 
them,  and  flattered  themselves  that  they  would 
remain  as  their  cat's-paws  forever.  An  exact 
analogy  of  this  in  the  history  of  Rome  may  be 
found  in  the  shortsightedness  of  the  senate,  which 
complacently  believed  that  the  Scipios  and  the 
Caesars  would  for  ever  remain  obedient  to  their 
order.  It  would  be  a  fatal  mistake  to  think  that 
a  cat's-paw  would  always  remain  docile  and  faith- 
ful to  its  employer.  Especially  when  it  is  fre- 
quently used  and  abused  it  becomes  conscious  of 
its  own  usefulness  and  real  strength;  and  self- 


Rise  of  the  Military  Regime    155 

assertion  is  born.  The  next  step  for  it  must  be 
the  sounding  of  the  strength  of  its  master,  then 
the  desire  awakens  to  take  the  place  of  the  master, 
when  it  is  found  that  he  is  not  so  strong  as  he 
looks  to  be. 

Moreover  in  any  country,  in  whatever  condi- 
tion, war  cannot  be  carried  on  without  a  great 
number  of  participants,  while  it  must  be  directed 
by  a  single  head.  War,  therefore,  tends  on  the 
one  hand  to  create  a  dictator,  and  on  the  other 
hand  to  precipitate  the  democratisation  of  a  coun- 
try. None  would  be  so  ignorant  for  long  as  to 
discharge  gladly  an  imposed  duty  without  enjoy- 
ing their  right  to  compensation  for  service  ren- 
dered. The  time  must  come  when  these  military 
leaders  should  supersede  the  ultracivilised  Kyoto 
nobles,  and  hold  the  reins  of  government  them- 
selves. The  transference  of  political  power  from 
the  higher  to  the  lower  stratum  was  unavoidable. 
These  generals,  howsoever  inferior  they  might  be 
in  rank  compared  with  the  court  nobles  of  the 
Fujiwara,  were  still  to  be  classed  among  the 
nobles,  and  it  was  yet  a  very  far  cry  to  the  time 
when  the  common  people  could  have  some  share 
in  the  politics  of  their  own  country. 


CHAPTER  VII 

THE    MILITARY    REGIME;    THE    TAIRA    AND    THE 
MINAMOTO;  THE  SHOGUNATE  OF  KAMAKURA 

FOR  some  time  the  military  class  had  been  rock- 
ing the  prestige  of  the  court  nobles,  and  at  last 
superseded  them  by  overturning  their  rotten  edi- 
fice. It  was  first  by  the  wars  of  the  so-called 
"Nine  Years"  and  "Three  Years/'  both  waged 
in  northern  Japan  in  the  latter  half  of  the  eleventh 
century  by  Yoriyoshi  and  Yoshiiye,  the  famous 
generals  of  the  Minamoto  family,  that  the  mili- 
tary class  began  to  grow  markedly  powerful  and 
independent.  Nearly  a  century  passed,  and  then 
Yoritomo,  one  of  the  great-great-grandsons  of 
Yoshiiye,  was  able  to  set  up  his  military  govern- 
ment, the  Shogunate,  at  Kamakura  in  the  province 
of  Sagami.  Previous  to  the  Kamakura  Shogun- 
ate, there  was  an  interim  between  it  and  the  old 
regime,  the  semi-military  government  of  the  Taira 
family.  The  family  of  the  Taira  sprang,  like 
that  of  the  Minamoto,  from  a  scion  of  the  im- 
perial family,  and,  like  the  latter,  had  been  en- 
gaged from  the  first  in  the  craft  of  war.  Of  the 
two,  the  Taira  first  succeeded  in  courting  the  fav- 
our of  the  Fujiwara  nobles,  and  the  members  of 

156 


The  Taira  and  the  Mmamoto  157 

the  former  family  were  appointed  to  less  danger- 
bus  and  more  lucrative  posts  than  the  Minamoto. 
As  Japan  at  that  time  kept  on  gravitating  toward 
the  west  of  Kyoto,  it  was  natural  that  the  influence 
of  the  Taira  should  have  been  extended  in  the 
western  provinces.  Some  of  the  noted  warriors 
belonging  to  this  clan  were  now  and  then  charged 
with  the  governorship  of  the  eastern  provinces, 
and  therefore  their  descendants  were  widely  scat- 
tered in  those  quarters  also.  In  the  east,  how- 
ever, the  influence  of  the  Minamoto  family  was 
paramount,  for  noted  warriors  of  this  family 
were  more  frequently  employed  than  the  Taira 
in  the  region  against  the  Ainu.  In  both  of  these 
families,  the  moral  link  between  several  branches 
within  the  family  was  very  loose,  perhaps  much 
weaker  than  in  the  Highland  clans  in  Scotland. 
Such  dissension  should  be  attributed  to  the  fact 
that  those  who  passed  under  the  same  family  name 
of  the  Minamoto  or  the  Taira  became  soon  too 
numerous  to  present  a  united  front  always,  when- 
ever a  conflict  with  the  rival  family  arose.  At  any 
rate  the  feud  between  the  respective  main  branches 
of  the  two  families  was  very  bitter  and  inveterate, 
covering  many  generations.  Of  the  two,  the  Min- 
amoto, hardened  by  constant  warfare  with  the 
still  savage  tribes  in  the  north,  and  trained  by  the 
privations  unavoidable  in  wars,  surpassed  the 
Taira  in  robustness  and  bravery.  The  Taira  be- 
came, on  the  contrary,  as  the  result  of  close  con- 
tact with  the  courtiers  at  Kyoto,  more  refined  than 


158  History  of  Japan 

the  Minamoto.  Though  alternately  employed  as 
generals  in  war  as  well  as  instruments  in  in- 
trigues, the  Taira  were  thought  by  the  Fujiwara 
to  be  more  docile,  and  therefore  were  more 
trusted  than  the  Minamoto.  This  is  why  the  for- 
mer were  able  to  seize  possession  of  the  govern- 
ment earlier  than  the  latter.  Kiyomori,  the  fast 
and  the  last  of  the  Taira,  who  was  made  the  high- 
est minister  of  the  crown,  as  if  he  were  himself 
one  of  the  Fujiwara  nobles,  was  able  to  reach 
that  goal  of  the  ambition  of  courtiers,  by  intrud- 
ing himself  among  them,  intermingling  his  sons 
and  grandsons  with  the  flower  of  the  Fujiwara, 
and  at  last  he  made  one  of  his  daughters  the  con- 
sort of  the  Emperor  Takakura.  His  only  dis- 
tinction as  compared  with  the  old  nobles  was  that 
his  personal  character  was  too  rough  and  soldier- 
like, and  the  means  he  resorted  to  were  too  drastic 
and  forcible,  for  the  over-refined  members  of  the 
Fujiwara.  Kiyomori  had  in  his  quality  too  much 
of  the  real  statesman  to  be  an  idle  player  in  the 
pageants  and  ceremonies  of  the  court,  and  it  is 
said  that  he  often  committed  blunders  through  his 
unseemly  deportment  as  courtier,  and  became,  on 
that  account,  the  laughing-stock  of  the  Fujiwara. 
Nevertheless  he,  like  the  most  of  the  Fujiwara, 
could  not  rid  himself  of  the  mistaken  idea,  that 
the  statesman  and  the  courtier  were  the  same 
thing,  so  that  none  could  be  the  one  without  being 
the  other.  The  younger  members  of  the  family 
were  reared  up  rather  as  courtiers  than  as  sol- 


The  Taira  and  the  Minamoto  159 

diers,  trained  more  in  playing  on  musical  instru- 
ments, in  dancing,  and  in  witty  verisification  of 
short  poems  than  in  the  use  of  weapons. 

The  most  memorable  deed  achieved  by  Kiyo- 
mori  was  the  change  of  the  capital  from  Kyoto 
to  Fukuwara,  a  part  of  the  present  city  of  Kobe. 
Till  then  Kyoto  had  been  continuously  the  capital 
of  the  empire  for  three  and  a  half  centuries.  To 
remove  the  centre  of  the  government  from  that 
sarcosanctity  must  have  been  a  great  surprise  to 
the  metropolitans.  As  to  the  interpretation  of 
the  motives  for  this  change,  historians  differ.  It 
is  ascribed  by  some  to  Kiyomori's  abhorrence  of 
the  conventionalism  which  obtained  in  the  old 
capital,  and  which  was  so  deeply  rooted  as  not  to 
be  eradicated  very  easily  so  long  as  he  stayed 
there,  or  else  to  his  anxious  desire  to  get  rid  of 
the  pernicious  meddling  of  the  audacious  priests 
of  the  temple  Yenryakuji,  on  mount  Hiyei,  the 
source  of  great  annoyance  to  the  government  of 
Kyoto.  By  other  historians  the  change  is  said 
to  have  originated  in  Kiyomori's  farsightedness 
in  having  set  his  mind  on  the  profit  of  the  trade 
with  China,  the  trade  from  which  his  family  had 
already  reaped  a  huge  profit,  and  which  could  be 
carried  on  more  actively  by  shifting  the  capital 
from  Kyoto  to  the  important  port  of  the  Inland 
Sea.  That  he  earnestly  desired  the  facilitation 
of  navigation  in  the  Inland  Sea  need  not  be 
doubted,  for  the  cutting  of  the  strait  of  Ondo,  the 
improvement  of  the  harbour  of  Hyogo,  as  the 


V 


160  History  of  Japan 

port  of  Kobe  was  called  at  that  time,  and  many 
other  works  pertaining  to  the  navigation  of  the 
sea  were  undertaken  at  his  orders.  It  is  not  cer- 
tain, however,  whether  any  of  the  above  men- 
tioned motives  sufficed  alone  to  induce  him  to  for- 
sake the  historical  metropolis.  Whatever  the 
reason  the  change  was  a  failure.  It  was  very 
unpopular  in  the  circle  of  the  Fujiwara  nobles, 
who  longed  ardently  to  return  to  their  old  nests, 
and  baffled  by  the  passive  resistance  of  these 
nobles  in  whatever  he  tried  to  do,  Kiyomori  could 
not  achieve  anything  worthy  of  mention  during 
the  remainder  of  his  life. 

The  brief  period  of  the  Taira  ascendancy  thus 
passed  away  very  swiftly.  It  was  since  1156  A. 
D.,  the  year  in  which  the  war  of  the  Hogen 
took  place,  that  the  military-men  had  begun  to 
discern  that  they  they  were  strong  enough  to  dis- 
place the  Fujiwara  nobles.  Only  three  years 
after  that,  the  destiny  of  the  two  rival  families 
was  for  a  time  decided.  The  Taira  remained  on 
the  field,  and  the  vanquished,  that  is  to  say,  the 
members  of  the  chief  branch  of  the  Minamoto, 
were  either  killed  or  deported,  the  rest  having 
been  scattered  and  rendered  powerless  to  resist. 
Yoritomo,  one  of  these  exiles,  was  taken  into  the 
custody  of  an  overseer  of  the  province  of  Idzu, 
in  the  vicinity  of  which  were  settled  the  descend- 
ants of  the  faithful  followers  of  his  forefathers. 
When  an  opportunity  came,  therefore,  he  was 
able  to  muster  without  difficulty  those  hereditary 


The  Taira  and  the  Minamoto  161 

vassals,  and  overran,  first  the  eastern  provinces, 
and  then,  with  the  assistance  of  one  of  his  younger 
brothers,  Yoshitsune,  who  had  taken  refuge  with 
Hidehira,  the  hybrid  generalissimo  of  the  half 
independent  province  of  Mutsu,  he  drove  the 
Taira  party  out  of  Kyoto,  whither  the  capital 
had  been  transferred  again  a  short  time  before, 
soon  after  the  death  of  Kiyomori.  What  re- 
mained to  be  done  was  consummated  by  the  tact 
and  bravery  of  Yoshitsune.  The  partisans  of  the 
Taira  family  fought  very  valiantly  on  the  coast 
of  the  Inland  Sea,  but  always  succumbed  in  the 
end  to  adverse  destiny.  In  the  last  battle  which 
was  fought  on  the  sea  near  the  strait  of  Shimo- 
noseki,  some  of  the  Taira  were  taken  prisoners, 
and  then  decapitated.  Many,  however,  died  in 
the  battle,  or  drowned  themselves,  for  to  be 
killed  in  cold  blood  by  an  enemy  has  ever  been 
thought  the  most  ignominious  fate  for  a  warrior 
of  Japan.  In  thus  presenting  a  united  front  to 
the  last  in  adversity,  the  kernel  of  the  Taira 
family,  though  much  enervated  by  their  court  life, 
proved  themselves  true  sons  of  the  chivalrous 
warriors  of  old  Japan.  This  catastrophe  took 
place  in  the  year  n8c. 

The  flourishing  perioti  of  the  Taira  family  was 
of  the  short  duration  of  thirty  years  only.  As  the 
rise  of  the  family  was  very  sudden,  its  downfall 
was  equally  abrupt.  It  was  like  a  meteor  travers- 
ing a  corner  of  the  long  history  of  Japan,  leaving, 
however,  an  indelible  memory  to  posterity.  The 


162  History  of  Japan 

peculiar  charm  of  the  culture  of  the  age  repre- 
sented by  the  elite  of  the  family  during  its  ascend- 
ency, and  its  chivalrous  end,  embellish  the  his- 
tory of  our  country  with  a  number  of  pathetic 
episodes  which  provided  abundant  themes  for 
poems,  tales,  and  dramas  of  the  after-age.  The 
most  famous  among  this  literature  is  a  narration 
called  the  Heike-monogatari,  Heike  in  Chinese 
characters  meaning  "the  family  of  Taira." 
Whether  the  mono  gat  art  or  tale  was  first  com- 
posed for  the  purpose  of  being  read  or  recited  is 
a  question.  It  is  certain,  however,  that  when  the 
story  became  widely  known,  called  by  the  more 
simplified  name  of  "the  Heikt"  it  was  generally 
recited  as  a  chant,  resembling  the  melody  of  Bud- 
dhist hymns,  accompanied  by  the  playing  the  biwa, 
a  stringed  instrument  the  shape  of  which  has 
given  its  name  to  the  largest  lake  in  Japan.  This 
recitation  is  the  precursor  of  the  utai,  which  was 
a  kind  of  recitation  fashionable  in  the  next  age. 
The  origin  of  the  more  modern  jorurl  recitation 
accompanied  by  the  shamisen  may  be  traced  to 
the  Heike  also.  What  pleased  the  audiences  most 
in  the  Heike  were  the  sad  vicissitudes  of  the 
family  and  the  gallant  chivalry  manifested  in  its 
downfall.  The  former,  preaching  the  uncertainty 
of  human  life,  was  sufficient  to  touch  the  courtiers 
with  keen  pathos,  courtiers  who  had  lived  out 
their  time,  and  having  been  taught  by  Buddhism 
to  look  on  every  thing  pessimistically,  were  glad 
to  sympathise  with  whatever  was  on  the  wane. 


The  Taira  and  the  Minamoto  163 

Differently  from  them,  warriors  were  also  fond  of 
hearing  the  rehearsal  of  the  Helke  with  thrills 
piercing  the  heart,  by  putting  themselves  in  the 
place  of  some  gallant  Taira  cavalier,  who  had 
fought  to  the  last  with  undaunted  courage  and  met 
his  death  with  calmness  more  than  mortal. 

It  is  not  only  because  the  Taira  family  was  in 
general  more  refined  than  the  Minamoto,  and 
gave  an  impulse  to  the  literature  of  Japan  by  its 
enlightened  chivalry,  that  the  period  forms  an 
important  turning-point  in  the  history  of  the  civil- 
isation of  our  country.  Almost  all  the  essential 
traits  of  our  civilisation  during  the  whole  mili- 
tary regime  can  be  said  to  have  been  initiated  in 
this  brief  Taira  epoch.  As  an  inheritor  of  the 
borrowed  civilisation,  the  Taira  warriors  were 
not  so  much  saturated  with  the  alien  refinement 
as  the  Fujiwara  nobles  were,  and  therefore,  when 
they  came  nearer  the  throne,  the  aspect  of  the 
court  was  not  a  little  vulgarised,  but  instead  there 
was  a  freshness  in  those  warriors  which  was 
found  wanting  among  the  Fujiwara,  already  over- 
wrought and  exhausted  by  too  much  Chinese  civil- 
isation. This  freshness  may  be  considered  an 
index  of  the  revival  of  the  conservative  spirit, 
which  had  been  long  lurking  in  the  lower  strata 
of  the  nation.  Conservatism  in  such  a  phase 
of  history  is  generally  on  the  side  of  strength  and 
energy.  It  is  true  that  Kiyomori,  his  sons,  and 
grandsons  endeavoured  rather  to  go  up  the  lad- 
der of  the  courtiers  higher  and  higher,  in  order  to 


164  History  of  Japan 

soar  'above  the  cloud.1  In  other  words,  it  was 
not  their  first  ambition  to  lead  the  people  in  the 
lower  strata  against  the  higher;  they  were  not 
revolutionists  at  all.  But  whatever  might  have 
been  their  real  intention,  they  could  not  ward  off 
those  followers  who  had  a  common  interest  with 
them.  There  was  no  doubt  that  the  lower  class 
of  people  sympathised  with  the  military-men, 
whether  they  were  of  the  Taira  or  of  the  Mina- 
moto  family,  far  more  deeply  than  with  the  Fuji- 
wara  nobles.  The  ascendency,  therefore,  of  the 
Taira  stirred  the  long  latent  spirit  of  the  majority 
of  the  nation,  and  this  re-awakening  of  the 
Japanese,  if  we  may  call  it  so,  gave  life  to  every 
fibre  of  the  social  structure,  urging  the  nation  to 
energetic  movement. 

The  most  tangible  evidence  of  this  resuscita- 
tion of  Japan  can  be  obtained  in  the  sculpture  of 
the  age.  The  first  flourishing  period  of  Japanese 
sculpture  anterior  to  this  is  the  era  of  the  Tem- 
pyo, that  is  to  say,  during  the  reign  of  the 
Emperor  Shomu.  After  that  the  art  fell  gradu- 
ally into  decadence,  and  no  period  could  com- 
pete with  the  Tempyo  era  except  the  Taira  age. 
The  works  of  Unkei  and  Tankei,  representative 
masters  who  made  their  names  at  this  time, 
though  lagging  far  behind  those  of  Tempyo  sculp- 
tors in  exquisite  softness  and  serenity,  yet  sur- 
passed the  latter  in  vigour  and  strength.  What 
they  liked  to  represent  most  were  statues  of  dei- 
ties rather  than  Buddha  himself,  and  of  the 


The  Taira  and  the  Minamoto  165 

deities  they  preferred  those  of  martial  character. 
Comparing  them  with  the  Tempyo  sculptures,  in 
which  the  subject  is  not  so  narrowly  circum- 
scribed, we  can  observe  the  change  of  the  national 
spirit  very  clearly. 

In  painting  also,  the  most  important  progress 
of  the  age  is  the  change  in  subjects  of  this  art, 
or  rather  the  increase  in  varieties  of  subjects  to 
be  painted.  Before  this  time  what  the  artists  gen- 
erally liked  to  paint  were  the  images  of  Buddha, 
Buddhist  deities,  scenes  in  Buddhist  history,  and 
portraits  of  celebrated  priests.  Landscapes  were 
put  on  canvas,  too,  though  not  so  frequently  as 
those  subjects  pertaining  to  Buddhism.  Since  then 
portraits,  not  only  of  priests,  but  also  of  laymen, 
such  as  courtiers  and  generals,  have  been  treated 
by  our  painters.  Some  masterpieces  of  the  new 
portraiture,  by  the  brush  of  Takanobu,  are  extant 
to  this  day.  This  development  of  portrait-paint- 
ing may  be  interpreted  as  a  symptom  of  the  newly- 
budding  individualism  on  the  nation.  As  to  scroll 
paintings,  formerly  we  had  pictures  of  consecu- 
tive scenes  in  Buddhist  history  painted  in  that 
manner,  but  scenes  from  secular  history  or  genre 
pictures  were  rare.  From  this  time  onward  we 
have  scrolls  of  a  character  not  purely  religious, 
though  Buddhist  stories  are  still  used  as  subjects 
for  painting  as  before.  Moreover,  in  earlier 
scrolls  the  best  attention  was  paid  to  painting 
Buddha  or  deities,  and  not  to  delineating  the 
auxiliaries,  such  as  landscapes,  buildings,  worship- 


'. 

166  History  of  Japan 

ping  multitudes  of  various  professions,  and  so 
forth,  while  in  the  new  kinds  of  scrolls  more  stress 
was  laid  on  depicting  those  auxiliaries  rather  than 
the  pious  personages  themselves.  Battle  scenes  in 
the  provinces  of  Mutsu  and  Dewa,  or  those  be- 
tween the  Taira  and  the  Minamoto  in  the  streets 
of  Kyoto,  were  also  painted  on  scrolls.  Another 
and  quite  novel  kind  extant  of  the  scroll  pictures 
of  this  age  is  the  satirical  delineation  of  the  man- 
ners and  customs  of  the  time  by  the  brush  of  the 
painter-priest  Toba-sojo.  In  the  famous  scroll 
certain  animals  familiar  to  the  daily  life,  such 
as  foxes,  rabbits,  frogs,  and  so  forth  are  depicted 
allegorically,  each  suggesting  certain  notorious 
personages  of  various  callings  in  the  contem- 
porary society. 

As  to  literature,  a  difference  similar  in  nature 
to  those  characteristics  of  the  literature  of  the  pre- 
ceding age  can  be  observed  very  distinctly.  In 
the  former  period,  though  the  essence  of  the  liter- 
ature in  Japanese  was  profoundly  influenced  by 
the  Chinese  spirit,  Chinese  vocabularies  and 
phrases  rarely  entered  into  sentences  without  be- 
ing translated  into  Japanese.  That  is  to  say,  the 
Japanese  literature  remained  pure  as  to  language, 
and  went  on  side  by  side  with  the  literature  in 
Chinese.  Now  the  combination  of  the  two  kinds 
began  to  take  form.  Chinese  words,  phrases,  and 
several  rhetorical  figures  began  to  be  poured  into 
the  midst  of  sentences,  the  structure  remaining 
Japanese  as  before,  so  that  those  sentences  may 


The  Taira  and  the  Minamoto  167 

be  considered  as  forming  a  kind  of  hybrid 
Chinese,  with  words  juxtaposed  in  a  Japanese 
style,  and  connected  by  Japanese  participles.  This 
change  resulted  in  making  a  great  many  Japanese 
words  obsolete,  and  it  has  since  become  necessary 
for  the  Japanese  constantly  to  resort  to  the 
Chinese  vocabulary  in  writing  as  well  as  in  speak- 
ing. The  growth  of  Japanese  as  an  independent 
language  was  thus  regrettably  retarded.  At  the 
same  time  Japanese  literature  reaped  an  immense 
benefit  from  this  adoption  of  the  Chinese  vocabu- 
lary, for  by  it  we  became  enabled  to  express  our 
thoughts  concisely,  forcibly,  and  when  necessary 
in  a  very  highflown  style,  things  not  utterly  im- 
possible but  exceedingly  difficult  for  Japanese  pure 
in  form.  The  use  of  Chinese  ideographs  thus  in- 
creased from  generation  to  generation,  until  now 
it  has  become  too  late  to  try  to  eradicate  them. 
All  that  which  the  Japanese  nation  has  achieved 
in  the  past,  its  history,  nay,  its  whole  civilisation, 
has  been  handed  to  us,  recorded  in  the  language, 
which  is  woven  of  Chinese  vocabularies  and 
Japanese  syntax,  and  denoted  by  symbols  which 
are  nothing  but  Chinese  ideographs  and  their  ab- 
breviations, the  Kana.  A  movement  to  supersede 
the  Chinese  ideographs  by  the  exclusive  use  of 
the  kana,  which  are  very  simple  abbreviations  of 
those  ideographs,  was  initiated  at  the  beginning 
of  the  Meidji  era,  but  was  dropped  soon  after- 
wards. Another  radical  movement  to  substitute 
the  Roman  alphabet  for  the  Chinese  ideographs 


168  History  of  Japan 

and  the  kana  in  writing  Japanese,  was  started 
nearly  at  the  same  time,  and  still  continues  to 
have  a  certain  number  of  zealous  advocates.  The 
success  of  such  a  movement,  however,  depends  on 
the  value  of  the  civilisation  already  acquired  by  the 
Japanese.  If  that  amounts  to  nothing,  and  can 
be  cast  aside  without  any  regret,  in  other  words, 
if  the  history  of  Japan  counts  for  nothing  for  the 
present  and  the  future  of  the  country,  then  the 
movement  would  have  some  chance  of  succees; 
otherwise  the  attainment  of  the  object  is  a  dream 
of  the  millenium. 

The  manifestation  of  the  new  spirit  of  the  new 
age  in  the  sphere  of  religion  is  not  less  remark- 
able than  in  that  of  art  or  of  literature.  Since 
its  introduction  into  our  country,  Buddhism  had 
been  very  singular  in  its  position  as  regards  the 
social  life  of  the  nation.  Though  the  imperial 
family  and  the  higher  nobles  earnestly  embraced 
the  new  creed,  and  worshipped  the  "gods  of  the 
barbarians,"  this  acceptance  of  Buddhism  can- 
not be  called  a  conversion,  because  their  religious 
thoughts  were  never  engrossed  by  it.  They  con- 
tinued to  pay  a  very  sincere  respect  to  the  old 
deities  of  Japan  as  before,  while  they  were  ador- 
ing Buddha  enthusiastically.  Shintoism  was,  if 
not  a  religion,  something  very  much  like  a  reli- 
gion, more  than  anything  else.  So  long  as  Shinto- 
ism  remained  as  influential  as  of  yore,  the  Japan- 
ese could  not  be  said  to  have  been  converted  to 
Buddhism.  The  Buddhist  priests,  having  per- 


The  Taira  and  the  Minamoto  169 

ceived  this,  tried  not  to  supersede  but  to  incor- 
porate Shintoism  into  their  own  creed,  as  I  have 
explained  before,  and  succeeded  in  it,  but  could 
not  erase  the  independence  of  Shintoism  entirely 
out  of  the  spiritual  life  of  the  Japanese.  It  can- 
not be  doubted  that  Buddhism  was  made  secure 
as  regards  its  position  in  Japan  by  this  incorpora- 
tion, but  in  general  it  gained  not  much.  Assimila- 
tion, generally  speaking,  has  as  its  object,  to  de- 
stroy the  independent  existence  of  the  things  to  be 
assimilated,  and  at  the  same  time  the  assimilator 
must  run  the  risk  of  causing  a  condition  of  hetero- 
geneity on  account  of  the  addition  of  the  new  ele- 
ment. Buddhism  could  not  destroy  the  independ- 
ent existence  of  Shintoism,  and  the  former  became 
heterogeneous  by  the  assimilation  of  the  latter,  so 
that  the  raison  d'etre  of  Buddhism  in  Japan  was 
very  much  weakened  by  the  assimilation.  The 
lower  strata  of  the  nation  were  very  slow  in  be- 
ing penetrated  by  Buddhism,  notwithstanding  the 
munificent  encouragement  afforded  to  it  by  the 
government,  for  example,  by  appointing  preachers 
not  only  in  the  neghbourhood  of  the  capital,  but  in 
distant  provinces  also,  or  by  ordering  the  erec- 
tion of  one  temple  in  each  province  at  the  ex- 
pense of  the  government.  The  common  people 
were  in  need  of  salvation  indeed,  but  from  the 
Buddhism  which  was  nationalised,  they  could  not 
expect  to  obtain  what  they  were  unable  to  find  in 
Shintoism. 

In  short,  Buddhism,  by  its  transformation  and 


iyo  History  of  Japan 

nationalisation,  lost  universality,  its  strongest 
point,  and  was  rendered  quite  powerless,  that  is 
to  say,  blunted  in  the  edge.  Buddhism  as  a  re- 
ligious philosophy  remained  of  course  intact,  but 
the  cunning  device  of  priests  to  make  it  comform- 
able  to  our  country  went  too  far,  and  resulted  only 
in  weakening  its  efficiency  as  a  practical  religion. 
There  were  still  to  be  found  some  numbers  of 
priests  who  pursued  their  study  in  the  intricate 
philosophy  of  Buddhism,  in  cloisters,  in  the  depths 
of  some  forest  or  mountain  recesses,  but  they  were 
almost  powerless  to  act  upon  society  in  general. 
The  mass  of  the  people  looked  on  Buddhism  only 
as  the  worship  of  an  aggregation  of  deities,  not 
much  different  from  common  objects  of  supersti- 
tion, or  simply  as  a  kind  of  show  very  pleasant 
to  see  and  to  enjoy.  They  were  too  busy  to  care 
for  meditation,  and  too,  ignorant  to  venture  on 
philosophising. 

Religion  as  a  show !  Seemingly  what  an  as- 
tounding blasphemy  even  to  entertain  such  an 
idea !  No  foreign  reader,  however,  would  be 
shocked  at  it,  who  knows  that  religious  plays 
made  the  beginning  of  the  modern  stage  of 
Europe,  and  that  in  villages  in  the  Alpine  valleys 
there  may  be  found  some  survivals  of  them  even 
now.  Not  only  that,  the  services  of  the  Roman 
Catholic  and  of  the  Greek  Orthodox  Church  con- 
tain even  to  this  day  not  a  few  theatrical  elements. 
An  appeal  of  this  nature  to  the  audience  has  al- 
ways the  effect  of  making  the  religion  poetical, 


The  Taira  and  the  Minamoto  171 

and  therefore  was  the  method  chiefly  resorted  to 
by  the  Church  in  the  Middle  Ages  throughout  all 
Christendom.  The  method  employed  by  the 
Buddhists  in  our  country  was  just  the  same.  They 
instituted  various  ceremonies  and  processions, 
each  apportioned  to  a  certain  definite  day  of  a 
certain  season,  and  these  religious  shows  served 
to  captivate  the  minds  of  the  spectators. 

Here,  however,  the  difference  should  be  noticed 
between  Christianity  and  Buddhism.  The  for- 
mer as  a  rule  is  the  religion  which  finds  its  foot- 
hold first  among  the  lower  classes  of  the  people, 
while  the  latter,  in  Japan  at  least,  began  its 
propaganda  with  the  upper  circles  of  the  nation, 
and  then  proceeded  downwards.  Though  the 
courtiers  could  frequently  enjoy  the  gorgeous 
spectacles  carried  out  by  priests  clad  in  rich  robes 
of  variegated  colours  amid  heavenly  music,  such 
scenes  could  be  witnessed  only  in  and  about  the 
metropolis,  and  were  moreover  too  costly  and 
aristocratic  to  be  enjoyed  by  the  common  people. 
The  masses  were  not  only  debarred  from  the  sal- 
vation of  their  souls,  but  from  the  sight  of  the 
pageants,  the  best  pastime  which  an  age  devoid 
of  a  theatre  could  afford.  Yet  those  masses  were 
a  necessary  ingredient  of  society  in  Japan,  by  no 
means  to  be  neglected.  Though  very  slowly,  their 
eyes  were  opening,  and  they  were  beginning  to 
claim  their  due.  How  could  this  demand,  not 
sufficiently  conscious  to  the  claimants  themselves, 
be  provided  for?  Solely  by  Buddhism,  which 


172  History  of  Japan 

should  have  been  by  whatever  means  reformed. 
Shintoism,  though  it  has  had  a  very  tenacious 
grip  on  the  national  spirit  of  the  Japanese,  is 
deficient  in  certain  particulars,  and  cannot  be 
called  a  religion  in  the  strict  sense,  so  that  it  was 
difficult  for  it  to  march  with  the  ever-advancing 
civilisation  of  our  country.  If  there  was  a  need, 
therefore,  for  something  which  could  not  be  ob- 
tained outside  of  religion,  it  was  to  be  sought  else- 
where than  in  Shintoism,  that  is  to  say,  in  Bud- 
dhism, which  was  then  the  only  cult  in  Japan 
worthy  to  be  called  a  religion.  To  seek  from 
it  anything  new,  which  it  could  not  give  in  the 
state  it  had  been,  means  that  it  ought  to  have  been 
reformed.  It  is  true  that  there  had  been  re- 
peated attempts,  since  the  beginning  of  the  tenth 
century,  to  make  Buddhism  accessible  and  intel- 
ligible to  all  classes  of  the  people,  and  this  kind 
of  movement  had  become  especially  active  at  the 
end  of  the  eleventh  century.  What  was  common 
to  all  of  these  movements  was  the  endeavor  to 
teach  the  merit  of  the  nem-butsu,  that  is  to  say, 
the  belief  that  anybody  who  would  invoke  the  help 
of  Buddha  by  calling  repeatedly  the  name  of 
Amita,  one  of  the  manifestations  of  Buddha, 
would  be  assured  of  the  blissful  after-life,  and 
that  the  oftener  the  invocation  was  made  the  surer 
was  the  response.  Most  elaborate  among  them 
was  an  organisation  of  a  religious  community  re- 
sembling in  its  character  a  joint-stock  company.  A 
member  of  this  community  was  required  to  con- 


The  Taira  and  the  Minamoto  173 

tribute  to  the  accumulation  of  the  blessing  by  re- 
peating its  invocation  a  certain  number  of  times, 
like  a  shareholder  of  a  company  paying  for  his 
share.  This  community  is  in  a  great  measure 
analogous  to  those  societies  of  Europe  in  the 
later  Middle  Ages,  which  tried  to  accumulate  the 
virtues  of  the  Ave  Maria  sung  by  their  members. 
The  most  striking  characteristic  of  this  community 
was  that  it  extolled  its  own  unique  merit  which  lay 
in  having  as  its  members  all  the  Buddhist  deities, 
whose  celestial  nem-butsu  would  be  sure  to  aug- 
ment the  dividends  of  the  earthly  shareholders ! 

To  organise  such  a  community  was  not  to  un- 
dermine the  traditional  edifice  of  Buddhism  in 
Japan,  but  to  support  it,  just  as  those  mendicant 
orders,  Benedictine,  Augustine,  Franciscan,  Dom- 
inican, and  so  forth,  were  formed  but  in  behalf 
of  the  Church  of  Rome.  The  intention  of  those 
who  emphasised  the  nem-butsu  was  very  far  from 
that  of  becoming  the  harbingers  of  the  reform 
movement  of  the  following  generations,  though 
the  latter  aimed  at  nearly  the  same  thing  as  the 
early  promoters  of  the  nem-butsu  did.  Yeshin, 
a  priest  in  the  temple  of  Yenryakuji,  became  the 
precursor  of  Honen,  who  was  born  more  than 
one  hundred  years  after  the  death  of  his  forerun- 
ner. The  former  would  not  and  could  not  be- 
come a  reformer,  though  he  was  highly  adored 
by  the  latter  for  his  saintliness,  who  styled  him- 
self the  only  expounder  of  the  former.  The  lat- 
ter, too,  was  very  modest  and  never  ventured  to 


174  History  of  Japan 

proclaim  himself  a  reformer.  Honen  was  one 
of  the  meekest  Buddhists  in  Japan.  Yet  he  was 
forced  against  his  will  to  become  the  founder  of 
the  Jodo  sect,  which  has  continued  influential  to 
this  day.  All  the  religious  reformers  of  the  Ka- 
makura  period  ran  in  his  wake. 

Religion,  art,  and  literature  were  all  thus  trans- 
forming themselves  almost  at  the  same  time,  and 
that  very  time  coincided  exactly  with  the  moment 
in  which  the  most  important  change  in  the  poli- 
tical sphere  was  taking  place.  Such  a  coincidence 
in  the  development  of  the  various  factors  of  civil- 
isation cannot  be  lightly  overlooked  as  a  mere 
chance  happening.  Surely  it  must  have  been  actu- 
ated by  a  common  impulse,  which  was  nothing 
but  the  urgent  demand  of  the  Zeitgeist.  The 
regime  matured  by  the  Fujiwara  nobles  at  Kyoto 
had  already  come  to  a  standstill.  Japan  had  to  be 
pushed  on  by  any  means  whatever.  It  is  this 
necessity  which  allowed  the  Taira  to  get  the  up- 
per hand  of  the  Fujiwara.  The  rise  of  this  sol- 
dier-family cannot  be  attributed  merely  to  the 
merit  of  its  representative  members.  But  its  fall 
owed  much  to  their  incompetency  in  not  having 
become  conscious  of  their  position  in  the  history 
of  Japan.  No  sooner  had  they  grasped  the  reins 
of  the  government,  than  they  began  to  tread  the 
path  which  their  predecessors  had  trod,  the  path 
leading  only  to  the  stumbling-block.  Too  quickly 
they  were  transforming  themselves  into  pseudo- 
courtiers.  "The  mummy-seekers  were  about  to 


The  Taira  and  the  Minamoto  175 

be  turned  into  mummies,"  as  a  Japanese  proverb 
has  it.  It  was  just  at  this  juncture,  the  last 
phase  of  the  transformation  of  the  Taira  war- 
riors, that  they  were  overturned  by  the  Mina- 
moto. In  short,  the  course  on  which  the  Taira 
steered  was  against  the  current  of  the  age.  If 
the  family  had  remained  in  power  longer  than  it 
actually  did,  then  the  just  budded  spirit  of  the 
new  age  would  have  dwindled  away,  and  to  Japan 
might  have  fallen  the  same  lot  as  befell  to  other 
oriental  monarchies.  For  our  country  it  was  for- 
tunate that  the  Taira  were  no  longer  able  to  stay 
at  the  helm  of  the  state. 

Minamoto-no-Yoritomo  preferred,  at  the  es- 
tablishment of  his  Shogunate,  a  course  quite  differ- 
ent from  that  of  the  Taira.  Having  been  brought 
up  during  his  boyhood  at  Kyoto,  and  being  there- 
fore acquainted  with  the  realities  of  the  metro- 
politan modes  of  life,  he  might  have  been,  per- 
haps, averse  to  the  Sybaritism  of  the  court. 
If,  on  the  other  hand,  he  had  been  inclined  to  fol- 
low in  the  footsteps  of  the  Taira,  he  was  not  in 
a  position  to  behave  as  he  would  have  liked,  for 
it  was  not  by  any  exertion  of  his  own  that  he  was 
exalted  to  the  virtual  dictatorship  of  the  military 
government.  The  Minamoto  and  the  Taira  who 
had  settled  in  the  eastern  provinces,  in  spite  of  the 
difference  of  their  families,  had  been  accustomed 
to  the  same  condition  of  living,  and  they  fought 
often  under  the  same  banner  against  the  Ainu. 
Though  quarrels  were  not  lacking  among  them, 


176  History  of  Japan 

they  could  not  help  feeling  the  warmth  of  the 
fraternity  of  arms  toward  one  another.  These 
"rough  riders"  had  gradually  become  refined  by 
the  education  imparted  by  country  priests;  tera- 
koya,  the  "hut  in  a  temple,"  was  the  sole  substi- 
tute for  the  elementary  school  at  that  time.  They 
had,  too,  occasion  to  come  into  contact  with  the 
civilised  life  of  the  metropolis,  for  it  was  their 
duty  to  stay  there  by  turns,  sometimes  for  years, 
as  guards  of  the  capital  and  of  the  imperial  resi- 
dence. Intelligent  warriors  among  them  took  to 
the  city  life  and  mastered  some  of  the  accomplish- 
ments highly  prized  by  courtiers.  Most  of  them, 
however,  looked  with  scornful  smile  upon  the  de- 
generate courtiers,  like  the  Germans  in  the  Eter- 
nal City  looking  with  disgust  on  the  decadent  state 
of  Imperial  Rome.  When  Yoritomo  entered  into 
their  company  as  an  exile  from  Kyoto,  these  war- 
riors were  very  glad  to  receive  him,  for  he  was 
descended  from  the  family  of  the  generals  whom 
their  forefathers  had  served  hereditarily,  and 
whose  names  they  still  revered.  With  this  exile 
as  their  leader,  they  rose  united  against  the  Taira, 
the  traditional  enemy  of  the  family  to  which  he 
belonged.  After  the  success  of  their  arms  they 
had  no  desire  to  have  their  chief  turned  into  a 
pseudo-courtier  after  the  example  of  the  Taira 
soldiers.  Kamakura  was  therefore  chosen  as  the 
seat  of  the  military  government.  This  was  in  the 
year  1183. 

In  truth,  Kamakura  cannot  be  said  to  be  a  place 


Shogunate  of  Kamakura       177 

strategically  impregnable  even  in  those  early 
times.  It  is  too  narrow  to  become  the  capital  of 
Japan,  being  closely  hemmed  in  by  a  chain  of 
hills.  Though  situated  on  the  sea,  its  bay  is  too 
shallow,  not  fit  for  mooring  even  a  small  wooden 
bark.  The  reason  why  the  place  happened  to  be 
chosen  must  be  sought,  therefore,  not  in  its  geo- 
graphical position,  but  in  that  the  town  was 
planted  nearly  in  the  centre  of  the  region  in- 
habited by  the  supporters  of  Yoritomo.  That  it 
was  also  the  location  of  the  Shinto  shrine,  Hachi- 
man  of  Tsurugaoka,  might  have  had  not  a  little 
weight  in  influencing  the  choice,  because  it  was 
in  this  shrine  that  Yoshiiye,  the  forefather  of 
Yoritomo  and  the  adored  demigod  of  the  war- 
riors of  Japan,  performed  the  ceremony  of  the 
attainment  of  his  full  manhood. 

The  military  government,  the  Shogunate,  set 
up  at  Kamakura,  was  in  its  nature  of  quite  a  dif- 
ferent type  from  that  of  the  Taira  at  Kyoto.  Be- 
fore entering  into  details,  it  is  necessary,  however, 
to  say  something  about  the  change  in  the  signi- 
fication of  government.  When  the  Fujiwara  be- 
came the  real  masters  of  Japan,  they  tried  at  first 
to  govern  wisely  and  sincerely.  But  as  time 
passed  their  energy  and  determination  gradually 
relaxed.  Their  growing  wealth  obtained  by  en- 
croachment on  public  lands  tended  to  mould  them 
as  a  profligate  and  indolent  folk,  so  that  they 
became  at  last  wholly  unfitted  for  any  serious  state 
affairs.  Moreover,  from  the  lack  of  any  event 


178  History  of  Japan 

which  would  have  necessitated  united  action  of  all 
the  family,  a  condition  which  might  have  been 
exceedingly  difficult  to  attain  even  if  they  had 
wished  it,  on  account  of  the  multiplication  of 
branches,  never-ceasing  internal  feuds  which 
helped  only  to  weaken  the  prestige  of  the  family 
as  a  whole  were  perpetually  arising.  It  was  at 
this  juncture  that  the  Emperor  Go-Sanjo  tried  to 
recover  the  reins  once  lost  to  the  hands  of  his 
ancestors.  The  task  which  he  left  unfinished  was 
achieved  by  his  son  and  successor,  the  Emperor 
Shirakawa.  When  the  power  was  restored  to  the 
emperor,  however,  it  was  not  in  the  same  con- 
dition as  when  lost.  The  state  business  decreased 
in  scope  and  significance,  all  that  was  left  being 
merely  the  disposal  of  not  very  numerous  manor 
lands,  which  had  been  left  untouched  by  the 
greedy  Fujiwara,  and  the  policing  of  the  capital. 
The  Emperor  Shirakawa  did  not  deem  it  neces- 
sary as  reigning  Emperor  to  pay  regular  attention 
to  them.  He  abdicated,  therefore,  in  favour  of 
his  son,  and  from  his  retired  position  he  man- 
aged the  so-called  state  affairs.  As  the  result  of 
such  an  assumption  of  power,  the  position  of  the 
reigning  emperor  became  very  problematic,  and 
irresponsibility  prevailed  everywhere.  The  im- 
perial family  thus  regained  some  of  its  historical 
prestige,  and  succeeded  in  curbing  the  arrogance 
of  the  Fujiwara.  The  latter,  however,  continued 
very  rich  and  powerful,  though  not  so  politically 
mighty  as  before.  For  a  short  while  the  Taira 


Shogunate  of  Kamakura       179 

achieved  its  object  in  partially  supplanting  the  in- 
fluence of  the  Fujiwara,  but  it  could  not  per- 
ceptibly weaken  the  latter.  The  downfall  of  the 
Taira  showed  clearly  that  in  such  a  state  of  the 
country  mere  names  and  titles  meant  practically 
nothing,  and  that  the  military  power  supported 
by  material  resources  was  the  thing  most  worth 
coveting.  The  Taira  started  on  this  line,  but 
soon  collapsed  by  abandoning  it.  How  could  a 
shrewd  politican  like  Yoritomo  be  expected  to 
imitate  the  blunder  of  his  opponent? 

The  Shogunate  set  up  by  Yoritomo  at  Kama- 
kura was  not  of  the  sort  which  could  appropri- 
ately be  called  a  regularly  organised  government 
It  was  modelled  after  the  organisation  of  a  fam- 
ily-business office,  which  was  common  to  all  the 
noble  families  of  high  rank.  There  were  several 
functionaries  in  the  Shogunate,  but  they  had  the 
character  rather  of  private  servants  than  of  state 
officials.  The  Shogun's  secretaries,  body-guards, 
butlers  and  so  forth  served  under  him  not  on  ac- 
count of  any  official  regulation  connecting  them 
publicly  with  him,  but  only  as  his  retainers,  and 
were  designated  by  the  name  of  the  go-keniny 
which  means  "the  men  of  the  august  household." 
To  sum  up,  the  Shogunate  was  established  not 
for  the  state  but  for  the  family  business.  Yori- 
tomo had  never  pretended  to  take  possession  of 
the  government  of  Japan.  The  fact  that  at  the 
beginning  of  the  Shogunate  its  jurisdiction  did  not 


180  History  of  Japan 

extend  over  the  whole  of  the  empire  testifies  to 
the  same. 

In  the  foregoing  chapters  I  have  spoken  about 
the  encroachment  on  public  lands  by  the  Fujiwara 
nobles.  The  private  farms  which  were  called  the 
sho-yen  and  resembled  in  their  character  the  man- 
ors or  great  landed  estates  in  England,  increased 
year  by  year,  so  that  they  extended  at  last  to  all 
the  distant  provinces  of  the  country.  Some  em- 
perors were  resolute  enough  to  try  to  put  a  stop 
to  the  growth  of  this  onerous  infringement  of  the 
public  property,  but  the  orders  issued  by  them  had 
very  little  effect.  As  to  the  management  of  these 
farms,  they  were  not  administered  directly  by 
those  nobles  who  owned  them,  and  it  was  not  un- 
common for  many  manors  lying  far  apart  from 
one  another  to  belong  to  the  same  owner.  The 
proprietors,  therefore,  generally  stationed  some 
of  their  domestic  servants  in  those  manors  to  act 
as  caretakers,  or  confided  the  management  to  men 
who  were  the  original  reclaimers  of  those  manors 
or  their  descendants,  from  whom  the  nobles  had 
received  the  lands  as  a  donation.  By  this  assump- 
tion of  the  duty  of  management,  these  servants  of 
these  nobles  arrogated  to  themselves  the  right  to 
govern  and  command  the  people  living  upon  the 
estates,  without  any  appointment  from  the  gov- 
ernment itself.  It  cannot  be  disputed  that  it  was 
a  kind  of  usurpation  not  allowable  in  the  regular 
state  of  any  organised  country.  The  provincial 
governors  of  that  time,  however,  were  impotent 


Shogunate  of  Kamakura       181 

to  put  a  bridle  on  those  impudent  managers,  for 
most  of  the  governors  appointed  stayed  in  Kyoto 
to  enjoy  the  pleasure  of  city  life,  and  left  the  busi- 
ness of  the  province  to  be  administered  by  their 
lieutenants.  Moreover,  some  of  the  manors  were 
evidently  exempted  from  the  intervention  of  the 
provincial  officials  by  a  special  order.  In  other 
words,  most  of  the  manors  were  communities 
which  were  to  a  great  degree  autonomous,  each 
under  the  jurisdiction  of  a  half  independent  man- 
ager, and  that  manager  again  standing  in  a  subor- 
dinate position  to  his  patron,  who  resided  generally 
at  Kyoto.  So  far  I  have  spoken  only  of  the  manors 
belonging  to  the  nobles  of  the  higher  class,  in- 
cluding members  of  the  imperial  family.  Other 
manors  possessed  by  Shinto  shrines  and  Buddhist 
temples  were  also  under  a  regime  not  much  dif- 
ferent from  those  of  the  nobles.  The  Taira,  too, 
at  the  zenith  of  their  family  power,  had  a  great 
number  of  such  estates  and  the  sons  of  Kiyomori 
fought  against  the  Minamoto  with  forces  re- 
cruited from  the  tenants  of  those  manors. 

When  Yoritomo  overcame  the  Taira,  he  con- 
fiscated all  the  manors  which  had  formerly  been 
possessed  by  that  family,  and  appointed  one  of  his 
retainers  to  each  of  these  appropriated  manors  as 
djito,  which  literally  means  a  chief  of  the  land. 
The  duty  of  these  djito  was  to  collect  for  their 
lord  Shogun  a  certain  amount  of  rice,  proportional 
to  the  area  of  the  rice  fields  belonging  to  the  es- 
tate. This  reserved  rice  was  destined  to  be  used 


182  History  of  Japan 

as  provision  for  soldiers,  and  was  in  reality  the  in- 
come of  the  djito,  for  he  was  himself  the  very  sol- 
dier who  would  use  that  rice  as  provision.  Besides 
the  collection  of  rice,  he  had  to  keep  in  order  the 
manor  to  which  he  had  been  appointed  as  chief, 
that  is  to  say,  the  police  of  the  maner  was  in 
his  hands.  Once  appointed,  a  djito  could  make 
his  office  hereditary,  though  for  this  the  sanction 
of  the  Shogunate  was  necessary.  Yoritomo  ap- 
pointed also  a  military  governor  to  each  of  the 
provinces.  The  authority  of  this  governor, 
called  the  shugo,  extended  over  all  the  retainers 
of  the  Shogun  in  that  province,  including  the 
djito.  It  should  be  noticed,  however,  that  the 
shugo  was  as  a  rule  a  warrior,  who  held  the 
office  of  djito  at  the  same  time,  in  or  out  of  that 
province. 

As  to  the  manors  which  were  owned  by  Kyoto 
nobles,  shrines,  and  temples,  and  therefore  not  at 
the  disposal  of  the  Shogun,  no  djito  was  appointed 
to  them.  Though  the  disputes  about  the  bounda- 
ries, right  of  inheritance,  and  various  other  ques- 
tions concerning  the  estates  were  decided  by  the 
legal  councillors  of  the  Shogunate,  jurisdiction 
was  restricted  to  those  cases  in  which  some  re- 
tainer of  the  Shogun  was  a  party.  Otherwise, 
the  right  of  decision  was  denied  by  the  Shogun. 
The  Shogun  never  claimed  any  right  over  the  land 
which  did  not  stand  expressly  under  his  jurisdic- 
tion. From  this  it  can  be  inferred  that  he  did 
not  pretend  to  take  over  the  civil  government  of 


Shogunate  of  Kamakura       183 

the  whole  of  Japan.  By  the  foundation  of  the 
Shogunate,  however,  Yoritomo  became  a  very 
powerful  military  chief,  sanctioned  by  the  Em- 
peror with  the  conferment  of  the  title  of  "gener- 
alissimo to  chastise  the  Ainu",  and  at  need  he 
was  able  to  mobilise  a  large  number  of  soldiers, 
by  giving  orders  to  djito  through  the  shugo  of  the 
provinces.  None  was  able  to  compete  with  him 
in  military  strength,  and  the  business  of  the  civil 
government  had  necessarily  to  fall  into  the  hands 
of  him  who  was  the  strongest  in  material  force. 
If  such  an  anomalous  state,  as  we  see  in  the  be- 
ginning of  the  Shogunate,  had  continued  very 
long,  the  Shogunate  would  never  have  become  the 
regular  government  of  the  country,  and  the  dis- 
memberment of  Japan  might  have  been  the  ul- 
timate result.  But  fortunately  for  the  future  of 
our  country,  it  did  not  remain  as  it  was  first  es- 
tablished. Those  managers  of  manors  not  be- 
longing to  the  Shogun,  seeing  that  they  could  be 
better  protected  from  above  by  turning  them- 
selves into  retainers  of  the  Shogun,  volunteered 
for  his  service.  Nobles,  shrines,  and  temples  pos- 
sessing these  manors  complained  of  course  about 
the  enlistment  of  the  manor-managers  into  the 
Shogunate  service.  For  by  the  transformation 
of  the  managers,  those  manors  ipso  facto  came 
under  the  military  jurisriction  of  Kamakura.  As 
those  owners,  however,  could  not  prevent  the 
transformation,  and  as  the  income  from  those  es- 
tates did  not  decrease  in  any  great  measure  by  the 


184  History  of  Japan 

extension  of  the  jurisdiction  of  the  Shogun  over 
them,  they  had  nothing  to  do,  but  tacitly  to  ac- 
quiesce in  the  new  conditions.  The  number  of 
retainers  thus  increased  rapidly,  and  with  it  the 
Shogunate's  sphere  of  jurisdiction  grew  wider  and 
wider,  till  at  last  it  covered  the  greater  part  of  the 
Empire.  The  Shogunate  was  then  no  more  a 
mere  business  office  of  a  family,  but  the  govern- 
ment de  facto  recognised  by  the  whole  nation. 
This  process  was  consummated  in  the  middle  of 
the  first  half  of  the  thirteenth  century. 

It  would  be  a  mistake  to  suppose  that  such  a 
momentous  change  was  effected  without  any  dis- 
turbance. The  Kyoto  nobles,  who  were  unable  at 
first  to  see  the  political  importance  of  the  estab- 
lishment of  the  Shogunate  in  an  insignificant  pro- 
vincial village,  were  gradually  awakened  to  the 
real  loss  which  they  would  surely  suffer  by  it,  and 
longed  to  recover  the  reins,  which  they  had  once 
forgotten  to  keep  and  guard.  Besides,  there  were 
many  malcontent  warriors  both  within  and  with- 
out the  Shogunate.  For  after  the  death  of  Yori- 
tomo,  though  the  title  of  Shogun  was  inherited 
by  his  two  sons,  one  after  the  other,  the  real 
power  of  the  Shogunate  fell  into  the  hands  of  his 
wife's  relations,  the  family  of  Hojo.  Warriors 
of  other  families  were  excluded  from  a  share  in 
the  military  government,  and  they,  dissatisfied  on 
that  account,  wished  for  some  change  in  order 
to  overthrow  the  Hojo.  Needless  to  say  that 
outside  of  the  Shogunate  ambitious  men  were  not 


Shogunate  of  Kamakura       185 

lacking,  who  desired  to  set  up  another  Shogunate 
in  place  of  that  at  Kamakura,  if  they  could.  All 
these  discontented  soldiery  allied  themselves  with 
the  Kyoto  nobles,  and  caused  the  civil  war  of 
Jokyu  to  ensue  between  them  and  the  Shogunate 
represented  by  the  Hojo  family.  The  war  ended 
in  the  defeat  of  the  former,  and  the  Shogunate 
emerged  out  of  the  war  far  stronger  than  be- 
fore. 

Thirteen  years  after  the  war,  the  first  compila- 
tion of  laws  of  the  Shogunate  was  undertaken  by 
Yasutoki  Hojo.  It  is  called  uthe  compiled  laws 
of  the  Joyei,"  Joyei  being  the  name  of  the  era 
in  which  the  compilation  was  issued.  This  com- 
pilation was  not  so  much  a  work  of  elaborate  sys- 
tematisation,  nor  an  imitation  of  foreign  laws,  as 
was  the  reform  legislation  of  the  TaTho.  Rather 
it  should  be  called  a  collection  of  abstracts  of 
particular  law  cases  decided  by  the  judicial  staff 
of  the  Shogunate.  It  is  therefore  an  outcome  of 
necessitated  experiences  like  English  "case-law", 
and  had  not  the  character  of  statute  laws  or  pro- 
visions deduced  from  a  certain  fundamental  legal 
principle  in  anticipation  of  all  probable  occur- 
rences. The  object  of  the  compilation  is  clearly 
stated  in  the  epilogue  written  by  Yasutoki  him- 
self. According  to  this,  it  was  far  from  the  mo- 
tive of  the  compilers  to  displace  the  old  system  of 
legislation  by  the  promulgation  of  the  new  one. 
Old  laws  became  a  dead  letter,  without  being 
formally  abrogated,  while  the  new  code  was  is- 


i86  History  of  Japan 

sued  only  for  the  practical  benefit  of  the  people  in 
charge  of  various  businesses. 

Whatever  might  have  been  the  real  motive  of 
Yasutoki  and  his  legal  councillors,  the  very  act 
of  the  compilation  cannot  in  itself  fail  to  betray 
the  consciousness  on  the  part  of  the  Shogunate 
that  it  had  already  a  sufficiency  of  test  cases  de- 
cided to  supply  models  for  the  decision  of  most 
of  the  disputes  that  might  be  brought  before  them 
in  the  future.  Or  we  might  say  that  the  Hojo 
became  confirmed  in  their  belief  that  the  Shogun- 
ate was  now  so  firmly  established  as  not  to  be 
easily  shaken  at  its  foundation,  and  that  they 
could  henceforth  command  in  the  name  of  a  regu- 
lar government  without  any  fear  of  serious  dis- 
turbances. Certainly  their  victory  in  the  civil 
war  must  have  rid  them  of  any  apprehension  of 
danger  from  the  side  of  Kyoto. 

This  compilation  was  issued  in  the  year  1232, 
that  is  to  say,  about  fifty  years  after  the  founding 
of  the  Kamakura  Shogunate.  Thus  we  can  see 
that  this  half-century  had  wrought  an  important 
change  in  the  history  of  Japan.  During  this  time 
the  military  regime  was  enabled  to  strike  a  firm 
root  deep  into  the  national  life  of  the  Japanese. 
The  family  of  the  Minamoto  soon  became  extinct 
by  the  death  of  the  second  son  of  Yoritomo,  and 
scions  of  a  Fujiwara  noble  and  then  some  of 
the  imperial  princes  were  brought  from  Kyoto  one 
after  another  as  the  successors  to  the  Shogunate. 
Yet  they  were  all  but  tools  in  the  capable  hands  of 


Shogunate  of  Kamakura       187 

the  Hojo  family,  which  remained  the  real  master 
of  the  military  government  of  Kamakura.  In 
course  of  time,  the  Hojo  also  fell,  but  other  mili- 
tary families  successively  arose  to  power,  and  the 
military  regime  was  kept  up  by  them  in  Japan 
until  the  middle  of  the  nineteenth  century.  It  is 
true  that  those  changes  in  the  headship  and  in 
the  location  of  the  Shogunate  caused  as  a  matter 
of  fact  corresponding  changes  in  the  nature  of 
the  respective  military  regime.  The  Shogunate 
of  the  Ashikaga  family  was  of  a  different  sort 
from  that  of  Kamakura,  while  that  of  the  Toku- 
gawa  at  Yedo  was  again  of  another  type  than  the 
Ashikaga's  at  Kyoto.  Throughout  all  these  dif- 
ferent Shogunates,  however,  certain  common 
characteristics  prevailed,  so  that  a  wide  gap  may 
be  discerned  between  them  as  a  whole  and  the 
government  of  the  Fujiwara  courtiers.  And 
those  characters  indeed  have  their  origin  all  in 
this  first  half  century  of  the  Kamakura  Shogunate. 
What  most  distinguished  the  military  regime 
from  the  preceding  government  was  its  being 
pragmatic  and  unconventional.  It  was  not  on 
account  of  noble  lineage  alone,  that  Yoritomo  was 
able  to  establish  his  Shogunate.  He  owed  a  great 
deal  to  the  willing  assistance  of  the  warriors  scat- 
tered in  the  eastern  provinces,  who  claimed  de- 
scent from  some  illustrious  personages  in  our  his- 
tory, but  in  fact  had  forefathers  of  modest  living 
for  many  generations,  and  had  maintained  very 
intimate  relations  with  the  common  people.  The 


i88  History  of  Japan 

Shogunate  was  bound  by  this  reason  not  to  neglect 
the  interests  of  those  who  had  thus  contributed 
to  its  establishment.  Moreover,  in  order  to  be 
able  to  raise  a  strong  army  at  any  time  when 
necessary,  the  Shogunate  was  obliged  to  take 
minute  care  of  the  welfare  of  the  retainers  and 
of  the  people  at  large,  for  the  faithfulness  of  the 
former  and  popularity  among  the  latter  counted 
more  than  other  things  as  props  of  the  regime. 
The  contrast  is  remarkable  when  we  compare  it 
to  the  government  by  the  Fujiwara  nobles,  who 
made  an  elaborate  legislation,  professing  to  gov- 
ern uprightly  and  leniently,  and  to  be  beneficial 
even  to  the  lowest  stratum  of  the  people,  yet  in 
reality  caring  very  little  for  the  felicity  of  the 
governed,  looking  on  them  always  with  contempt, 
though  this  lack  of  sympathy  might  be  attributed 
more  to  some  old  racial  relation  than  to  the  mo- 
rality of  those  nobles.  After  all,  the  government 
of  the  Shogun,  being  regulated  by  a  few  decrees 
and  guided  by  practical  common  sense,  operated 
far  better  than  the  Fujiwara's.  Where  formal- 
ism had  reigned,  reality  began  now  to  prevail. 
The  spirit  of  the  age  was  about  to  be  emancipated 
from  convention.  Japan  was  regenerated. 

It  was  this  regeneration  of  Japan,  which  kept 
up  and  nourished  what  was  initiated  in  the  Taira 
period.  But  for  the  Kamakura  Shogunate,  how- 
ever, those  germs  of  the  new  era  might  have  been 
Wasted  forever.  One  thread  of  the  continuous 
development  from  the  Taira  to  the  Minamoto 


Shogunate  of  Kamakura       189 

period  may  be  clearly  discerned  in  the  sphere  of 
religion.  In  1212  died  Honen,  the  reformer  of 
Buddhism,  of  whom  I  have  already  spoken  in  the 
preceding  chapter,  but  before  his  death  his  teach- 
ings had  gathered  a  great  many  adherents  around 
him,  and  the  sect  of  the  Jodo  became  independ- 
ent of  that  of  the  Tendai.  It  was  from  this 
Jodo  sect  that  the  Shinshu  or  the  "orthodox" 
Jodo,  now  one  of  the  most  influential  Buddhist 
sects  in  Japan,  sprang  up,  and  became  independ- 
ent also.  Shinran,  the  founder  of  the  latter  sect, 
is  said  to  have  been  one  of  the  disciples  of  Honen, 
and  the  tenets  of  his  sect,  initiated  by  Shinran  him- 
self and  supplemented  by  his  successors,  bear 
striking  resemblance  to  the  reform  tenets  of 
Luther  in  laying  stress  on  faith  and  in  denouncing 
reliance  on  the  merit  of  good  works  in  order  to 
arrive  at  salvation.  That  the  priests  belonging  to 
this  sect  have  avowedly  led  a  matrimonial  life, 
a  custom  which  was  unique  to  this  sect  among  Jap- 
anese Buddhists,  is  another  point  of  resemblance 
to  Lutheranism.  In  other  respects,  for  example, 
in  preaching  the  doctrine  of  predestination,  it  can 
be  considered  as  analogous  to  Calvinism  also. 

Another  important  sect,  which  branched  off 
from  the  Tendai,  is  that  of  the  followers  of 
Nichiren.  His  sect  is  called  the  Hokke,  or 
Nichiren,  after  the  name  of  the  founder  himself, 
and  the  sect  still  contains  a  vast  number  of  de- 
votees. It  is  the  most  militant  sect  of  Buddhism 
in  Japan,  and  that  militancy  might  be  traced  to 


190  History  of  Japan 

the  personality  of  Nichiren,  the  founder,  who  was 
the  most  energetic  and  aggressive  priest  Japanese 
Buddhism  has  ever  produced.  He,  too,  never 
claimed  to  have  founded  a  new  sect,  and  insisted 
that  his  doctrine  was  simply  a  resuscitated  Tendai 
tenet.  We  can  easily  see,  however,  that  in  its 
pervading  tendency  it  approached  other  reformed 
sects  of  the  same  age  rather  than  the  old  or 
orthodox  Tendaii.  Nichiren  died  in  Wie  year 
1282,  so  that  his  most  flourishing  period  falls  in 
the  middle  of  the  thirteenth  century. 

One  more  sect  I  cannot  pass  without  comment- 
ing on  is  the  Zen  sect.  Its  founder  in  Japan  is 
Yosai,  whose  time  conincided  with  that  of  Honen. 
Twice  he  went  over  to  China,  which  had  been 
for  more  than  two  hundred  years  under  the 
sovereignty  of  the  Sung  dynasty,  and  studied  there 
the  doctrine  of  the  Zen  sect,  which  was  then 
prevailing  in  that  country.  After  his  return 
from  abroad,  he  began  to  preach  first  at  Hakata, 
which  had  long  continued  the  most  thriving  port 
for  the  trade  with  China.  Afterwards  he  re- 
moved to  Kyoto  and  thence  to  Kamakura,  making 
enthusiasts  everywhere,  especially  among  the 
warriors.  Like  all  other  new  sects,  the  teaching 
of  Yosai  was  not  entirely  a  novelty,  being  a  de- 
velopment of  one  of  the  many  elements  which 
constituted  old  Buddhism.  The  specialty  of  the 
sect  was,  instead  of  arriving  at  salvation  by  be- 
lief in  some  supernatural  being  outside  and  above 
one's  self,  to  encourage  meditation  and  introspec- 


Shogunate  of  Kamakura        191 

tion,  and  its  general  character  tended  to  be  mystic, 
intuitive,  and  individualistic.  Strong  self-reliance 
and  resolute  determination,  qualities  indispensable 
to  warriors,  were  the  natural  and  necessary  out- 
come of  this  teaching.  It  was  largely  patronised  by 
the  Shogunate  and  the  Hojo  on  that  account. 
Though  Yosai  became  the  founder  of  the  sect, 
neither  he  himself  nor  his  teaching  could  hardly  be 
called  sectarian.  To  establish  an  hierarchical 
community  or  to  organise  a  systematised  doctrine 
was  beyond  his  purpose,  but  the  result  of  his 
preaching  was  precisely  to  bring  both  into  being. 
Not  only  the  characteristics  of  these  new  sects, 
but  the  manner  of  their  propagation  deserves 
close  attention.  Some  of  them  were  started  in  the 
eastern  provinces,  and  gradually  extended  their 
missionary  activity  toward  the  west,  that  is  to  say, 
in  the  direction  which  is  contrary  to  that  of  the 
extension  of  civilisation  in  former  times.  Others, 
though  started  in  the  west  or  at  Kyoto,  concen- 
trated their  efforts  in  the  eastern  provinces  with 
Kamakura  as  centre  of  propagation.  In  short, 
all  the  reformed  sects  turned  their  attention 
rather  to  the  eastern  than  to  the  western  prov- 
inces. This  preference  of  the  east  to  the  west 
originated  in  the  circumstance  that  the  less  civil- 
ised east  gave  to  those  missioners  a  greater  pros- 
pect of  enlisting  new  adherents,  than  western  Ja- 
pan, which  would  of  a  surety  be  slow  to  follow 
their  new  teachings,  having  been  already  won  over 
by  the  older  cults.  It  might,  however,  be  added 


192  History  of  Japan 

that  the  preachers  of  the  new  doctrines  saw,  or 
rather  overvalued,  the  importance  of  the  new  po- 
litical centre  as  the  nucleus  of  a  fresh  civilisation 
which  might  rapidly  develop. 

To  say  sooth,  the  field  of  activity  of  those  un- 
tiring priests  was  not  restricted  to  those  eastern 
provinces,  which  are  denoted  by  the  general  ap- 
pellation of  "Kwanto",  but  was  extended  into  the 
far  northern  provinces  of  Mutsu  and  Dewa. 
This  region  at  the  extremity  of  Honto  was  long 
ago  created  as  provinces,  but  had  lagged  far 
behind  the  rest  of  Japan  in  respect  of  civilisation. 
A  considerable  number  of  the  Ainu  were  still 
lingering  in  the  northern  part  of  the  two  prov- 
inces. Fujiwara-no-Hidehira,  the  generalissimo 
of  the  region,  who  harboured  Yoshitsune,  the 
younger  brother  and  victim  of  Yoritomo,  is  said 
to  have  been  of  Ainu  blood.  His  sphere  of  in- 
fluence reached  Shirakawa  on  the  south,  which 
was  considered  at  that  time  the  boundary  between 
civilised  and  barbarous  Japan.  The  time  had 
arrived,  however,  when  this  barrier  was  at  last 
to  be  done  away  with.  When  a  quarrel  arose 
between  the  two  brothers,  Yoritomo  and  Yoshi- 
tsune, after  the  annihiliation  of  the  Taira,  and  the 
latter  sought  refuge  with  Hidehira,  Yoritomo 
thought  of  marching  into  Mutsu.  This  expedi- 
tion was  undertaken  in  the  year  1189,  after  the 
death  of  Hidehira.  His  sons  were  easily  de- 
feated. The  land  taken  from  them  was  distrib- 
uted by  Yoritomo  among  his  soldiers,  who  fol- 


Shogunate  of  Kamakura       193 

lowed  him  from  the  Kwanto  and  fought  under 
his  banner.  The  vast  region,  by  coming  thus  un- 
der the  military  authority  of  the  Kamakura  Sho- 
gunate, was  for  the  first  time,  taken  into  Japan 
proper.  It  was  on  account  of  this  extension  of 
political  Japan  over  the  whole  of  Honto,  that  the 
new  sects  had  a  chance  to  penetrate  into  those 
provinces. 

We  have  seen  that  religion  was  the  first  and 
the  most  forcible  exponent  of  the  new  age.  If 
the  Shogunate  of  Kamakura  had  remained  in 
power  longer  than  it  did,  other  factors  of  the 
new  civilisation  might  have  developed  quite  afresh 
around  the  Shogunate.  Art  and  literature  of  an- 
other type  than  that  which  flourished  at  Kyoto 
might  have  blossomed  forth.  The  time  was,  how- 
ever, not  yet  ripe  for  the  total  regeneration  of 
Japan.  The  conventionalism  of  the  Kyoto  civil- 
isation more  and  more  influenced  the  Shogunate, 
which  was  still  too  young  and  had  nothing  solid  of 
its  own  civilisation  capable  of  resisting  the  infil- 
tration of  the  old.  Besides,  several  difficulties 
which  lay  in  the  way  of  the  Shogunate  cooperated 
in  bringing  about  its  fall  in  the  year  of  1332. 
Japan  had  to  go  on  in  a  half  regenerated  state  for 
some  time. 


CHAPTER  VIII 

THE  WELDING  OF  THE  NATION 
THE  POLITICAL  DISINTEGRATION  OF  THE  COUNTRY 

A  WAR  with  a  foreign  power  or  powers  is  gen- 
erally a  very  efficient  factor  in  history,  conducing 
to  the  unification  of  a  nation,  especially  when  that 
nation  is  composed  of  more  than  one  race.  The 
German  Empire,  which  was  consolidated  mainly 
by  virtue  of  the  war  of  1864,  1866,  and  1870- 
1871,  is  one  of  the  most  exemplary  instances. 
Japan,  being  surrounded  by  sea  on  all  sides,  has 
had  more  advantages  than  any  continental  country 
in  moulding  into  one  all  the  racial  elements  which 
happened  to  find  their  way  into  the  insular  pale. 
These  are  the  very  same  advantages  which  Great 
Britain  has  enjoyed  in  Europe.  We  should  have 
been  able,  perhaps,  without  any  coercion  from 
without,  to  become  a  solid  nation  by  the  sole  oper- 
ation of  geographical  causes.  If  we  had  been 
left,  however,  to  the  mercy  of  influences  of  those 
kinds  only,  then  we  might  have  been  obliged 
to  wait  for  long  years  in  order  to  see  the  nation 
welded,  for  in  respect  of  the  complexity  of  racial 
composition,  Japan  cannot  be  said  to  be  inferior 
to  any  national  state  in  either  hemisphere.  To  fa- 

194 


The  Welding  of  the  Nation    195 

cilitate  the  national  consolidation,  therefore,  the 
force  acting  from  without  was  most  welcome  for 
us. 

Of  wars  serviceable  to  such  an  end,  however, 
there  had  been  very  scanty  chances  offered  to  us. 
Though  the  wars  against  the  Ainu  had  continued 
much  longer  than  is  apt  to  be  imagined  by  modern 
Japanese,  and  had  made  their  influence  felt  in 
bringing  about  the  consolidation  of  the  Japanese 
as  a  nation,  the  spasmodic  insurrections  of  the 
aboriginies  were  but  flickerings  of  cinders  about 
to  die  out.  For  several  centuries  the  Ainu  had 
been  a  race  destined  only  to  wane  irrevocably 
more  and  more,  so  that  no  serious  danger  was  to 
be  feared  from  that  quarter.  Outside  of  the  Ainu, 
no  other  foreign  people  dared  for  a  long  time  to 
invade  us  on  so  large  a  scale  as  to  cause  any  se- 
rious damage. 

As  regards  China,  the  dynasty  of  the  Sung, 
which  began  to  reign  over  the  empire  in  the  year 
960,  had  been  constantly  harassed  by  the  incur- 
sions of  various  northern  tribes.  After  an  ex- 
istence of  a  century  and  a  half,  the  greater  portion 
of  northern  China  was  bereft  of  the  dynasty  by 
the  Chin,  a  state  founded  by  a  Tartar  tribe  called 
the  Churche.  The  Chin,  however,  was  in  turn 
overthrown  in  the  year  1234  by  the  Mongols,  an- 
other nomadic  tribe,  which  rose  in  the  rear  of  the 
latter  state.  Within  a  half  century  from  that,  the 
Chinese  dynasty  of  the  Sung,  which  had  been  long 
gasping  in  the  south,  drew  its  last  breath  under 


196  History  of  Japan 

pressure  of  the  same  Mongols  that  founded  the 
Empire  of  the  Yuan. 

From  China,  therefore,  in  the  state  it  had  been, 
we  had  nothing  to  fear.  As  to  the  Korean  pen- 
insula, which  had  come  under  the  influence  of 
China  at  the  time  of  the  T'ang  dynasty,  the  state 
founded  there  by  the  inhabitants  was  enabled  now 
to  breathe  freely  on  account  of  the  anarchical 
condition  of  the  suzerain  state.  Though  Kokuri 
and  Kutara  had,  in  spite  of  our  assistance,  been 
both  destroyed  by  the  army  of  the  T'ang,  Shiragi, 
which  had  been  left  unmolested  by  the  T'ang  as 
a  half  independent  ally,  conquered  the  greater 
part  of  the  peninsula,  and  the  people  of  that  state, 
frequently  pillaged  our  western  coasts.  This 
Shiragi  surrendered  at  the  beginning  of  the  tenth 
century  to  Korea,  a  new  state  which  arose  in  the 
north  of  the  peninsula.  The  relations  of  the  new 
Korea  with  our  country  were  on  the  whole  very 
peaceful,  except  for  some  interruptions  caused 
by  the  incursions  of  the  pirates  from  that  country 
on  our  coast  at  the  end  of  the  same  century. 

Besides  the  Koreans,  there  were  many  tribes 
inhabiting  the  north  and  the  east  of  Korea  and 
along  the  coast  of  the  Sea  of  Japan,  which  made 
themselves  independent  of  China  one  after  the 
other,  though  all  the  states  founded  by  them  had 
but  an  ephemeral  existence.  Some  of  those  minor 
states  kept  up  a  very  cordial  intercourse  with  our 
country,  while  others  acted  in  a  contrary  way. 
Among  the  latter  may  be  counted  the  pirates  from 


The  Welding  of  the  Nation    197 

Toi,  that  is  to  say,  from  the  region  of  a  Churche 
tribe,  though  the  real  home  of  this  throng  of  sea- 
thieves  has  not  yet  been  identified  with  any  ex- 
actness, pirates  who  devastated  the  island  of  Iki 
and  the  northern  coast  of  Kyushu  with  a  fleet  con- 
sisting of  more  than  fifty  ships.  This  took  place 
in  the  year  1019,  and  the  repulse  of  this  piratical 
attack  was  the  last  military  exploit  of  the  Fuji- 
wara  nobles. 

After  that  complete  tranquillity  reigned  in  our 
western  quarter  for  more  than  two  centuries  and 
a  half  until  the  first  Mongolian  invasion  of  1274. 
Hitherto,  to  repel  the  inroads  of  priates,  the 
forces  which  could  be  set  in  motion  in  the  western 
provinces  only,  had  proved  to  be  more  than  suf- 
ficient for  the  purpose.  Against  the  first  Mon- 
golian invasion  also,  the  retainers  of  the  Shogun 
in  the  western  provinces  only  were  mobilised  as 
usual  by  command  from  Kamakura.  The  battle 
scenes  of  the  war  were  described  by  one  of  the 
warriors  who  took  part  in  it,  and  painted  by  a 
contemporary  master  on  a  scroll,  which  has  come 
down  in  good  preservation  to  our  day,  and  now 
forms  one  of  the  imperial  treasures  to  be  handed 
on  to  prosperity.  The  expeditionary  fleet  of  the 
Yuan  consisted  of  more  than  nine  hundred  ships, 
with  15,000  Mongols  and  Chinese  and  8,000  Ko- 
reans on  board,  besides  6,700  of  the  crews,  so 
that  it  was  too  overwhelming  in  numbers  even  for 
our  valiant  soldiers  to  fight  against  with  some 
hope  of  victory.  It  was  not  by  the  valour  of  our 


198  History  of  Japan 

soldiers  alone,  therefore,  that  the  invasion  was 
frustrated.  The  elements,  the  turbulent  wind  and 
wave,  did  virtually  more  than  mere  human  efforts 
could  have  achieved  in  destroying  the  formidable 
enemy's  ships. 

Irritated  at  this  failure  of  the  first  expedition, 
Khubilai,  the  Emperor  of  Yuan,  immediately  or- 
dered the  preparation  of  another  expedition  on 
a  far  larger  scale.  The  second  invasion  of  Japan 
was  undertaken  at  last  in  the  1281,  after  an  in- 
terval of  seven  years.  This  time  the  invading 
forces  far  outnumbered  those  of  the  first  expedi- 
tion, totalling  more  than  one  hundred  thousand  in 
all.  On  the  other  hand,  the  forces  which  the 
Shogunate  could  raise  in  the  western  provinces 
only  proved  this  time  plainly  inadequate.  Seeing 
this,  Tokimune  Hojo,  who  was  the  virtual  master 
of  the  Shogunate,  mobilised  the  retainers  in  the 
eastern  provinces  too,  and  sent  them  to  the  battle- 
field in  Kyushu.  A  fierce  battle  was  fought  on 
the  shore  near  Hakata.  Our  soldiers  made  a  des- 
perate effort  to  prevent  the  landing  of  the  enemy's 
troops,  contending  inch  by  inch  against  fearful 
odds,  so  that  the  Mongols  could  not  complete 
their  disembarkment,  before  a  hurricane  suddenly 
arose  that  swept  away  at  least  two-thirds  of  their 
men  and  ships.  A  lasting  check  was  thus  put  upon 
the  expansion  of  the  triumphant  Mongols  on  the 
east,  just  forty  years  after  the  battle  of  Liegnitz 
in  Silesia  had  been  fought  successfully  by  the 
Teutonic  nobles  on  the  west  against  the  same  foe. 


The  Welding  of  the  Nation    199 

Though  the  frustration  of  the  two  Mongolian 
attempts  upon  our  country  should  rather  be  at- 
tributed to  the  intervention  of  elemental  forces 
which  worked  at  very  propitious  opportunities, 
than  to  the  bravery  of  our  warriors,  it  cannot 
be  disputed  that  they  fought  to  their  utmost,  so 
that  it  would  be  derogatory  to  the  military 
honour  of  our  forefathers,  if  we  supposed  that 
nothing  worth  mentioning  was  achieved  by  them 
at  all.  In  any  case,  the  annihilation  of  the  Mon- 
golian fleet  by  us  is  an  historical  feat  which  might 
be  considered  together  with  the  defeat  of  the 
Invincible  Armada  by  the  English  three  centuries 
later.  In  both  countries  the  memorable  victory 
was  due  to  the  dauntless  courage  of  the  warriors 
engaged  in  the  battle,  and  the  firm  attitude  of  the 
person  who  stood  then  at  the  helm  of  the  state. 
In  Japan,  Tokimune  did  not  lend  his  ears  to  the 
milder  counsels  of  the  shrewder  diplomatists  at 
the  court  of  Kyoto. 

What  is  more  noteworthy,  however,  than  any- 
thing else  in  this  war  was  not  the  bravery  of  our 
forefathers,  but  the  fact  that  men  recruited  from 
the  eastern  as  well  as  from  the  western  provinces 
of  the  empire  fought  for  the  first  time  side  by  side 
against  the  foreign  invaders.  Such  a  cooperation 
of  the  people  from  all  quarters  of  Japan  in  de- 
fence of  the  country  was  not  a  sight  which  could 
have  been  witnessed  before  the  establishment  of 
the  military  regime,  for  until  that  time  the  unifica- 
tion of  the  Empire  had  not  extended  to  the  north- 


200  History  of  Japan 

ern  extremity  of  Honto,  and  for  ninety  years 
after  the  inauguration  of  the  Shogunate  at  Kama- 
kura,  there  had  been  no  occasion  for  our  war- 
riors to  try  their  fortune  in  arms  against  any 
foreign  enemy.  Now  the  Japanese  were  induced 
for  the  first  time  to  feel  the  necessity  for  national 
solidarity,  only  because  enterprising  Khubilai 
dared  to  attack  the  island  empire,  which  would 
have  done  no  harm  to  him  if  he  had  left  it  un- 
molested, and  would  have  added  very  little  to 
his  already  overgrown  empire,  if  he  had  succeeded 
in  his  adventurous  expedition.  It  may  be  per- 
haps exaggerating  a  little  to  call  this  war  a  na- 
tional undertaking  on  our  part  when  we  consider 
the  small  number  of  men  engaged  in  it.  The  re- 
tainers of  the  Shogunate,  however,  who  were  the 
representatives  of  the  Japanese  of  that  time,  all 
hurried  to  the  northern  coast  of  Kyushu,  even 
from  the  remotest  part  of  the  empire,  in  order  to 
defend  their  country  against  their  common  foe. 
The  peculiar  custom  of  intimidating  children  to 
stop  their  crying,  by  reminding  them  of  the  Mon- 
golian invasion,  an  obsolescent  custom  which  has 
existed  even  in  the  northernmost  region  of  Honto, 
shows  how  thoroughly  and  deeply  the  Mongol 
scare  shook  the  whole  empire,  and  left  its  indel- 
ible impress  on  the  nation  as  a  whole.  The  first 
beat  of  the  pulse  of  a  national  enthusiasm  has 
thus  become  audible. 

If  this  feeling  of  national  solidarity  had  gone 
deep  into  the  consciousness  of  the  people,  and  had 


The  Welding  of  the  Nation   201 

continued  steadily  increasing  without  relaxation, 
then  it  might  have  done  considerable  good  in  facil- 
itating the  wholesome  organisation  of  our  national 
state.  Viewed  from  this  point,  it  must  be  con- 
sidered rather  a  misfortune  to  our  country  that 
the  terrible  enemy  was  too  easily  put  to  rout. 
The  pressure  once  removed,  men  no  more 
troubled  themselves  about  the  need  for  solidarity. 
Nay,  the  war  itself  sowed  the  seeds  of  discontent 
among  the  warriors  engaged,  on  account  of  the  in- 
capacity of  the  Shogunate  to  recompense  them 
amply  for  their  services.  Already  after  the  civil 
war  of  the  Jokyu  era,  the  military  government  of 
Kamakura  had  been  reduced  to  a  straitened  condi- 
tion, for  what  it  could  get  by  the  confiscation  of 
the  properties  of  the  vanquished  proved  insuf- 
ficient to  provide  the  rewards  for  the  faithful 
followers  of  the  Shogunate.  In  the  war  with  the 
Mongols,  there  was  no  enemy  within  the  country 
from  whom  land  could  be  confiscated.  Never- 
theless those  warrors  had  to  be  rewarded  with 
grants  of  land  only,  which  the  Shogunate  could 
find  nowhere.  If  the  private  moral  bond,  which 
had  linked  the  retainers  with  the  Shogun  at  the 
time  of  Yoritomo,  could  long  continue  in  the  state 
it  had  been,  the  Shogunate  could  have  sometimes 
expected  from  them  service  without  recompense. 
The  military  government,  with  the  Hojo  family 
as  its  real  master,  however,  could  not  likewise  ex- 
act gratuitous  service  from  them.  The  relation 


202  History  of  Japan 

between  the  Shogunate  and  its  retainers  became 
too  public  and  formal  for  this. 

Those  who  were  appointed  as  djito  by  Yori- 
tomo  at  the  beginning  of  the  Shogunate  had  all 
been  retainers  of  the  Minamoto  family  from  the 
first.  Though  they  discharged  the  duties  of  mili- 
tary police  within  their  respective  manors  as  if 
they  were  public  officials,  yet  their  private  char- 
acter far  outweighed  their  public  semblance.  As 
the  Shogunate  gradually  took  the  form  of  a  regu- 
lar government,  this  private  and  personal  bond 
between  the  Shogun  and  his  retainers  grew 
weaker,  and  the  public  character  of  the  djito  be- 
gan to  predominate.  This  was  especially  the 
case  after  the  virtual  management  of  the  Sho- 
gunate fell  into  the  hands  of  the  Hojo  family. 
It  is  true  that  those  retainers  still  called  them- 
selves the  go-kenin,  or  the  domestics  of  the  Sho- 
gun of  Kamakura.  The  later  Shogun,  however, 
sprung  from  the  Fujiwara  family  or  of  blood  im- 
perial, and  could  not  demand  the  same  obedience 
which  Yoritomo  had  found  easy  to  obtain  from 
his  hereditary  vassals.  In  effect,  the  Shogunate 
reserved  to  the  end  the  right  of  giving  sanction 
as  regards  the  inheritance  of  the  office  of  djito, 
but  the  exercise  of  the  reserved  right  was  gener- 
ally nominal.  A  djito  could  appoint  as  his  suc- 
cessor either  his  wife  or  any  of  his  children,  or 
could  divide  his  official  tenure  among  many 
inheritors.  No  Salic  law  and  no  law  of  primo- 
geniture yet  existed  in  Japan  of  the  Kamakura 


The  Fall  of  Kamakura       203 

period,  so  that,  besides  many  djito  who  were  in- 
capable of  discharging  the  military  duties  in  per- 
son on  account  of  sex  or  age,  there  were  to  be 
found  eventually  a  great  number  of  djito,  whose 
official  tenure  covered  a  very  small  patch  of  rice- 
field,  so  small  that  it  was  too  narrow  to  exercise 
any  jurisdiction  within  it!  Moreover,  men  of 
utterly  unwarlike  professions  like  priests,  and  cor- 
porations such  as  Shinto  shrines  and  Buddhist 
temples,  were  also  entitled  to  succeed  to  the  in- 
heritance of  the  office  of  djito,  if  only  it  were  be- 
queathed to  them  by  a  lawful  will.  In  these  cases, 
where  the  rightful  djito  could  not  officiate  in  per- 
son, a  lieutenant,  private  in  character,  used  to  be 
appointed.  Those  lieutenants,  however,  not  be- 
ing publicly  responsible  to  the  Shogun,  behaved 
very  arbitrarily.  That  was  a  breach  severely  felt 
in  the  military  system  of  the  Shogunate. 

The  worst  evil  of  all  was  that  the  Shogunate, 
which  should  have  been  an  office  for  household 
affairs  and  the  camp  of  the  Shogun,  was  gradually 
turned  into  a  princely  court.  Those  warriors 
who  did  valiant  service  under  Yoritomo  in  es- 
tablishing the  Shogunate  had  been  in  a  great 
measure  illiterate,  so  that  only  with  great  difficulty 
could  the  Shogun  find  a  secretary  among  his  re- 
tainers. As  the  organisation  of  the  military  gov- 
ernment approached  completion,  the  need  of  a 
literary  education  on  the  part  of  the  warriors  in- 
creased accordingly.  Such  an  education,  the 
source  of  which,  however,  was  not  to  be  sought 


204  History  of  Japan 

at  that  time  out  of  Kyoto,  could  hardly  be  in- 
troduced into  Kamakura  without  being  accom- 
panied by  other  elements  of  the  metropolitan 
civilisation  represented  by  the  Fujiwara  nobles. 
The  installation  of  a  scion  of  the  Fujiwara  and 
of  princes  of  the  blood  imperial  into  the  Shogu- 
nate  facilitated  the  permeation  of  the  Kyoto  cul- 
ture, which  by  its  nature  was  too  refined  to  suit 
congenially  men  of  military  profession.  The  body- 
guard of  the  Shogun  began  to  be  chosen  from 
warriors  whose  demeanor  was  the  most  courtier- 
like,  and  one  of  the  accomplishments  necessary 
was  the  ability  to  compose  short  poems.  Such  a 
condition  of  the  Shogunate  could  not  fail  to 
estrange  those  retainers  who  did  not  live  habitu- 
ally in  Kamakura,  and  were,  therefore,  not  yet 
tainted  with  the  effeminacy  of  a  courtier's  life. 
The  main  support,  on  whom  the  Shogun  should 
have  been  able  to  depend  in  time  of  stress,  became 
thus  unreliable.  At  this  juncture  an  Ainu  insur- 
rection, which  was  the  last  recorded  in  our  his- 
tory, broke  out  in  the  year  1322,  and  continued 
till  the  downfall  of  the  Kamakura  Shogunate.  It 
was  by  this  insurrection  that  the  tottering  edifice 
of  the  military  government  was  finally  shaken,  in- 
stantly leading  to  its  catastrophe. 

The  force  which  gave  the  finishing  stroke  to  the 
Shogun's  power  and  prestige  came,  as  had  long 
been  expected,  from  Kyoto.  Inversely  as  the 
warriors  of  Kamakura  had  been  turned  to  pseudo- 
courtiers,  the  court-nobles  of  Kyoto  had  become 


The  Fall  of  Kamakura       205 

tainted  by  the  militaristic  temperament  of  the 
Kamakura  warriors.  The  training  in  archery,  the 
dog-shooting  in  an  enclosure,  which  was  consid- 
ered a  specially  good  training  for  a  real  battle, 
and  many  other  martial  pastimes  became  the 
fashion  among  the  Kyoto  nobles,  as  it  had  been 
among  warriors.  After  their  defeat  in  the  civil 
war  of  the  Jokyu,  they  felt  more  keenly  than  be- 
fore the  magnitude  of  their  power  lost  to  Kama- 
kura, and  became  the  more  discontented.  More- 
over, from  the  four  corners  of  the  empire  the 
malcontents  against  the  Hojo  family  flocked  to 
Kyoto,  and  persuaded  the  already  disaffected 
courtiers,  to  attempt  the  restoration  of  the  real 
command  of  the  government  to  themselves.  The 
Shogunate,  having  been  apprised  of  the  plot,  tried 
to  suppress  it  in  time  by  force,  but  was  unable  to 
strike  at  the  root  of  the  evil,  for  the  recalcitrants 
rose  against  the  Hojo  one  after  another.  On  the 
other  hand,  those  retainers  who  would  have  will- 
ingly died  for  a  Shogun  of  the  Minamoto  family 
did  not  like  to  stake  their  lives  on  behalf  of  the 
Hojo.  Kamakura  was  at  last  taken  by  a  handful 
of  warriors  from  the  neighbouring  provinces  led 
by  a  chieftain  of  one  of  the  branch  families  of  the 
Minamoto.  The  last  of  the  Hojo  committed  sui- 
cide, and  with  the  downfall  of  the  family,  the 
Shogunate  of  Kamakura  broke  down.  This  hap- 
pened in  the  year  1334.  The  real  power  of  the 
state  was  restored  to  Kyoto  in  the  name  of  the 
tEmperor  Go-Daigo. 


206  History  of  Japan 

The  courtiers  of  Kyoto  rejoiced  in  the  thought 
that  they  could  now  conduct  themselves  as  the 
true  masters  of  Japan,  but  they  were  instantly 
disillusioned.  Those  warriors  who  had  assisted 
them  in  the  restoration  of  their  former  power, 
would  not  allow  the  courtiers  to  have  the  lion's 
share  of  the  booty.  Supported  by  a  multitude  of 
such  dissatisfied  soldiery,  Takauji  Ashikaga,  an- 
other scion  of  the  Minamoto,  made  himself  the 
real  master  of  the  situation,  and  was  appointed 
Shogun.  Though  once  defeated  by  the  army  of 
his  opponents  at  Kyoto,  he  was  soon  enabled  to 
raise  a  large  host  in  the  western  provinces,  where, 
since  the  Mongolian  invasion,  the  majority  of  the 
warriors  thirsted  for  the  change  more  than  in 
other  provinces,  and  he  captured  the  metropolis. 
His  opponents,  however,  continued  their  resist- 
ance in  various  parts  of  the  empire.  The  courti- 
ers, too,  were  divided  into  two  parties,  and  the 
majority  sided  with  the  stronger,  that  is  to  say, 
with  the  Ashikaga  family.  At  the  same  time  the 
imperial  family  was  divided  into  two.  Thus  the 
civil  war,  which  strongly  resembled  the  War  of 
the  Roses,  ensued  and  raged  all  over  the  provinces 
for  about  fifty-six  years,  until  the  two  parties  were 
reconciled  at  last  in  the  year  1392.  In  this  way 
the  whole  of  the  empire  came  again  under  one 
military  regime,  and  for  about  two  centuries,  the 
family  of  the  Ashikaga  continued  at  the  head  of 
the  new  Shogunate. 

The  new  Shogunate  was  established  at  Kyoto, 


The  Ashikaga  Shogunate       207 

instead  of  Kamakura,  which  became  now  the  seat 
of  a  lieutenancy,  administered  by  a  branch  of  the 
Ashikaga,  and  therefore  reduced  in  political  im- 
portance. This  change  of  the  seat  of  the  military 
government  is  a  matter  of  great  moment  in  the 
history  of  our  country.  One  of  the  several  rea- 
sons which  may  be  assigned  for  the  change,  was 
that  the  supporters  of  the  Ashikaga  were  not 
limited  to  the  warriors  of  the  eastern  provinces, 
as  they  had  been  with  the  Kamakura  Shogunate. 
Takauji  owed  his  ultimate  success  rather  to  the 
soldiers  from  the  western  provinces,  so  that  Kyo- 
to suited  far  better  as  the  centre  of  his  new  mili- 
tary regime  than  Kamakura. 

Another  reason  which  the  Ashikaga  Shogunate 
had  in  view  in  changing  its  seat,  was  that  a  great 
apprehension  which  had  been  entertained  by 
the  former  Shogunate,  would  thereby  cease.  One 
of  the  anxieties  which  had  harassed  the  govern- 
ment of  Kamakura  constantly  had  been  the  fear 
that  it  might  one  day  be  overthrown  by  attack 
from  Kyoto.  To  provide  against  the  danger  a 
resident  lieutenant, — afterwards  increased  to  two, 
— a  member  of  the  family  of  Hojo,  was  stationed 
at  Kyoto.  The  function  of  these  lieutenants  was 
to  look  out  for  the  interests  of  the  Shogunate  at 
Kyoto,  and  at  the  same  time  to  superintend  the  re- 
tainers in  the  western  provinces.  Besides,  being 
two  in  number,  these  lieutenants  watched  each 
other  closely,  so  that  it  was  impossible  for  either 
of  them  to  try  to  make  himself  independent  of 


208  History  of  Japan 

Kamakura.  This  system  worked  excellently  for 
a  time,  but  was  ultimately  unable  to  save  the  de- 
clining Shogunate.  By  shifting  the  seat  of  the 
military  government  to  Kyoto  itself,  this  anxiety 
might  now  be  removed. 

The  greatest  profit,  however,  which  accrued  to 
the  Shogunate  by  the  change  of  its  government 
seat,  was  that  one  could  facilitate  the  achievement 
of  the  political  concentration  of  the  empire,  by 
making  it  coincide  with  the  centre  of  civilisation. 
If  the  Shogunate  of  Kamakura  could  keep,  with 
its  political  power,  its  original  fresh  spirit,  which 
had  remained  latent  during  the  long  regime  of  the 
courtiers  and  begun  suddenly  to  develop  itself 
along  with  the  establishment  of  the  military  gov- 
ernment, the  result  would  have  been  not  only  the 
prolonging  of  the  duration  of  the  Shogunate,  but 
the  full  blossoming  of  a  healthy  and  unenervated 
culture,  and  Kamakura  might  have  become  the  po- 
litical as  well  as  the  cultural  centre  of  the  empire. 
The  history  of  our  country,  however,  was  not  des- 
tined to  run  in  that  way.  The  time-honoured 
civilisation,  which  had  been  nurtured  at  Kyoto 
since  many  centuries,  was,  though  of  exotic  origin, 
in  itself  a  highly  finished  one.  Notwithstanding 
its  effeminacy,  it  had  its  own  peculiar  charm,  which 
ranked  in  perfection  far  above  the  naive  culture 
of  Kamakura,  the  latter  being  too  rough  and  new, 
however  refreshing.  Those  Buddhist  priests  who 
had  once  hoped  to  make  Kamakura  the  centre  of 
their  new  religious  movement,  found  at  last  that 


The  Ashikaga  Shogunate       209 

unless  they  secured  a  firm  foothold  in  the  old 
metropolis,  nothing  permanent  could  be  attained. 
The  missionary  campaign  of  the  various  reformed 
sects  had  been  undertaken  with  renewed  vigour  at 
Kyoto  since  the  end  of  the  thirteenth  century.  In 
other  words,  the  enervation  of  the  Kamakura 
Shogunate  disappointed  those  torch-bearers  of  the 
new  civilisation,  who  might  perhaps  have  expected 
too  much  from  the  political  power  of  the  military 
government  established  there.  Thus  the  Sho- 
gunate of  Kamakura  had  lost  its  raison  d'etre, 
before  other  factors  of  civilisation,  such  as  art 
and  literature,  had  time  to  develop  themselves 
there  independent  of  those  of  Kyoto,  so  as  to  suit 
the  new  spirit  of  the  new  age,  that  is  to  say,  before 
the  Shogunate  could  accomplish  its  cultural  mis- 
sion in  the  history  of  Japan.  The  culture  of  Ky- 
oto proved  itself  to  be  omnipotent  as  ever. 

Regarded  in  this  manner,  the  return  of  the  gov- 
ernmental seat  to  Kyoto  had  a  great  advantage. 
The  new  Shogunate,  having  located  its  centre  in 
the  same  historical  place  where  the  classical  civili- 
sation of  Japan  had  had  its  cradle  also,  its  mili- 
tary and  political  organisation  could  work  hand 
in  hand  with  the  social  and  cultural  movement. 
The  prestige  of  the  Shogun  was  bedecked  with  a 
brighter  halo  than  when  Kamakura  had  been  the 
seat  of  his  government.  The  change,  however, 
was  accompanied  with  invidious  results,  ruinous 
not  only  to  the  Shogunate,  but  to  the  political  in- 
tegrity of  the  country  at  large. 


210  History  of  Japan 

After  having  experienced  the  vicissitudes  of  a 
long  civil  war,  the  courtiers  became  convinced  that 
they  could  not  overthrow  by  -any  means  the  mili- 
tary regime,  which  had  already  taken  deep  root 
in  the  social  structure  of  our  country.  So  they 
began  to  think  that  it  was  wiser  for  them  to  make 
use  of  that  military  power  than  to  try  any  abor- 
tive attempts  against  it.  They  heaped,  therefore, 
on  the  successive  Shoguns  of  the  Ashikaga  family 
titles  of  high-sounding  honour,  much  higher  than 
those  with  which  the  Shoguns  of  Kamakura  had 
been  invested.  In  the  imperial  palace,  too,  special 
deference  was  paid  to  the  Shogun.  Such  a  rise 
in  the  court-rank  of  the  Shogun  induced  his  re- 
tainers to  vie  with  one  another  in  obtaining  some 
official  rank  of  distinction  in  the  courtiers'  hierar- 
chical scale.  Those  who  belonged  to  the  higher 
classes  among  them,  though  they  were  mostly  the 
shugo  or  military  governors  of  one  or  more  prov- 
inces, used  to  spend  a  greater  part  of  their  time 
at  Kyoto,  on  account  of  holding  some  civil  office 
in  the  government  of  the  Shogun,  and  lived  in  a 
very  aristocratic  way,  which  was  easy  and  indo- 
lent, that  is  to  say,  not  much  different  from  that  of 
the  courtiers.  There  were  many  social  meetings, 
in  which  both  courtiers  and  warriors  participated 
together,  and  the  object  of  these  meetings  mostly 
consisted  in  enjoying  various  kinds  of  literary  pas- 
times, among  which  the  commonest  was  a  trick  in 
versification  called  renga,  that  is  to  say,  the  com- 
posing by  turns  of  a  line  of  an  unfinished  poem, 


The  Ashikaga  Shogunate       211 

which  should  form  a  sequence  to  the  preceding 
and  at  the  same  time  become  the  prologue  to  the 
next.  Through  manifold  channels  of  this  and  the 
like  kinds  of  amusements,  a  very  intimate  rela- 
tion between  the  two  classes  was  cemented.  The 
refinement  of  the  courtiers'  circle,  though  some- 
what vulgarised  compared  with  that  of  the  previ- 
ous period,  freely  penetrated  into  the  families  of 
the  rough  soldiery.  Marriages  between  mem- 
bers of  the  two  classes  also  took  place  frequently, 
by  which  the  courtiers  gained  materially,  while 
the  soldiers  could  thereby  assuage  the  uneasiness 
of  their  parvenu-consciousness.  A  new  social  life 
thus  sprang  up. 

Among  the  two  parties,  which  were  reconciled 
in  this  way,  that  which  profited  the  more  by  it, 
was  of  course  the  courtiers.  Although  the  in- 
come from  their  manors,  to  which  they  were  en- 
titled as  proprietors  de  jure}  might  have  become 
less  in  comparison  with  that  of  the  age  anterior 
to  the  establishment  of  the  Kamakura  Shogunate, 
yet  they  were  now  relieved  of  all  the  troubles 
which  might  have  beset  them  had  they  remained 
holding  the  real  power  of  the  state.  Having  re- 
linquished their  political  ambitions  and  shifted  all 
the  cares  of  the  state  and  military  affairs  upon  the 
shoulders  of  the  Shogunate,  they  became  utterly 
irresponsible,  could  breathe  freely  and  enjoy  their 
idle  hours  not  in  the  least  disturbed.  On  the  other 
hand,  the  militarists,  having  found  that  it  was  no 
longer  necessary  to  circumscribe  the  privileges  of 


212  History  of  Japan 

the  courtiers  still  more  narrowly  than  before,  for- 
got that  ultimately  their  interests  must  necessarily 
collide  in  principle  with  those  of  the  latter.  What 
were  contradictory  at  bottom  seemed  to  them  prac- 
tically reconcilable.  The  Shogunate  thought  that 
it  was  its  duty  to  uphold  the  interests  of  the  cour- 
tiers by  its  military  power,  a  task  which  was  soon 
found  to  be  impossible.  On  account  of  the  weak- 
ness of  the  central  government,  disorder  ruled  in 
Kyoto  and  in  the  provinces  as  well,  and  paved  the 
way  for  the  political  disintegration  of  the  whole 
empire.  To  explain  the  political  phenomena  I 
must  turn  for  a  while  to  the  relations  between  the 
shugo,  the  military  governors  of  provinces,  and 
the  djito  under  their  protection. 

In  the  time  of  the  Kamakura  Shogunate,  as 
aforesaid,  each  province  had  a  military  governor, 
called  the  shugo,  appointed  by  the  Shogun.  The 
shugo,  himself  a  djito,  and  a  very  influential  one 
of  that  class,  served  as  an  intermediate  comman- 
der in  transmitting  to  the  djito  under  him  the  mili- 
tary instructions  which  he  had  received  from 
Kamakura.  He  was,  therefore,  nothing  else  but  a 
marshal  of  all  the  djito  within  that  province. 
There  existed  no  relation  of  vassalage  between 
him  and  the  djito  under  his  military  jurisdiction. 
The  latter  remained  to  the  end  the  direct  vassals 
of  the  Shogunate  at  Kamakura,  and  only  as  re- 
gards the  military  organisation  were  subordinated 
to  the  shugo.  The  office  of  the  shugo  was  not  the 
hereditary  possession  of  any  family,  so  that  the 


The  Ashikaga  Shogunate       213 

Shogun  could  nominate  any  djito  to  be  shugo  of 
any  province  at  his  pleasure,  without  fear  of  dis- 
turbing thereby  the  personal  relation  between  him 
and  his  retainers  in  that  province.  In  some  re- 
spects this  relation  resembled  that  of  the  English 
king  and  the  barons,  who  swore,  besides  their 
oath  of  fealty  to  a  higher  noble  as  their  liege  lord, 
direct  allegiance  to  their  king.  As  long  as  the 
line  of  Yoritomo,  therefore,  continued  as  heredi- 
tary Shogun,  the  Shogunate  could  depend  on  the 
fidelity  of  those  djito,  who  were  but  the  house- 
hold vassals  of  the  Minamoto  family,  and  by  this 
personal  tie  keep  the  political  unity  of  the  'country 
infrangible. 

After  the  extinction  of  the  Minamoto  family, 
the  Shogun  who  succeeded  one  after  another  had 
no  hereditary  nor  personal  relations  with  those 
djito,  and  could  claim  no  more  than  the  official 
prestige  of  the  Shogun  allowed  them  to  do.  As 
to  the  Hojo  family,  though  the  real  power  of  the 
Shogunate  was  in  its  hands,  originally  it  was  no 
higher  in  rank  than  the  djito,  and  could  not,  in 
its  own  name,  command  obedience  from  any  of 
the  Shogun's  retainers.  There  is  some  similarity 
between  the  organisation  of  the  time  of  the  Kam- 
akura  Shogunate  in  this  second  phase  and  the 
"Kreis"  institution  of  the  German  empire  in  the 
fifteenth  century,  which  was  initiated  with  the  ob- 
ject of  political  concentration  by  Maximilian  I., 
whose  real  power  lay  in  his  being  a  duke  of  Aus- 
tria, and  not  Emperor  of  Germany.  However 


214  History  of  Japan 

admirable  as  an  organisation,  such  a  political  sta- 
tus was  undoubtedly  untenable.  No  wonder  that 
the  military  regime  of  Kamakura  gradually  col- 
lapsed. 

The  relation  of  shugo  and  djito  in  the  time  of 
the  Ashikaga  was  quite  of  a  different  sort  from 
that  in  the  former  Shogunate.  The  office  of  shugo 
became  now  the  hereditary  possession  of  certain 
privileged  families,  which  constituted  a  body  of 
higher  warriors,  towering  above  the  common 
djito.  The  shugo  stood  in  the  position  of  pro- 
tector to  all  the  djito  of  the  province  he  governed, 
and  those  djito  who  stood  under  a  shugo  were 
designated  his  "hikwan"  or  proteges.  The  rela- 
tion of  vassalage  arose  thus  between  the  shugo  and 
the  djito  in  the  same  province,  a  legal  status  which 
had  not  existed  in  the  Kamakura  period.  The 
direct  relation  between  the  common  djito  and  the 
Shogun,  which  was  the  main  spring  of  the  political 
regime  of  the  Kamakura  era,  was  now  cut  off. 
No  doubt  the  shugo  in  the  Ashikaga  period  had 
in  their  provinces,  besides  their  suzerainty  over 
the  djito,  the  tenure  of  certain  tracts  of  land,  as  in 
the  days  of  Kamakura.  The  great  difference  be- 
tween them,  however,  was  that  in  the  Kamakura 
era  a  retainer  of  the  Shogun  was  first  installed  as  a 
djito  of  a  manor,  and  then  appointed  shugo }  while 
in  the  Ashikaga  age  the  land  which  the  shugo  held 
directly  was  his  demesne  as  shugo  and  not  the  land 
held  as  a  retainer  of  the  Shogun  at  Kyoto,  inde- 
pendent of  his  office  of  shugo.  To  sum  up,  the 


The  Ashikaga  Shogunate       215 

shugo  of  the  Ashikaga  period  was  not  a  mere  of- 
fice, as  In  the  days  of  Kamakura,  but  a  legal  status 
of  the  warriors  ranking  next  to  the  Shogun.  As 
the  result  of  such  an  organisation  each  province 
or  group  of  provinces  under  a  shugo  became  a 
political  entity,  while  it  had  been  but  a  military 
entity  in  the  Kamakura  era.  If  the  Shogun  at 
Kyoto,  therefore,  had  been  strong  enough  to  en- 
force his  will  over  all  the  shugo  of  the  provinces, 
then  the  political  unity  of  the  country  at  large 
could  safely  continue  in  the  hands  of  the  Ashi- 
kaga. 

The  Shogunate  of  the  Ashikaga,  however,  had 
not  been  originally  so  formulated  as  to  enable  it 
to  impose  implicit  obedience  on  all  the  higher 
military  officials  of  the  shugo  class.  For  this  fam- 
ily, though  a  branch  of  the  Minamoto,  had  noth- 
ing in  its  history  that  could  attract,  as  Yoritomo 
did,  a  vast  number  of  willing  warriors  to  serve 
under  its  banner.  That  Takauji  was  promoted 
to  the  headship  of  the  second  military  govern- 
ment was  largely  due  to  the  assistance  of  the  war- 
riors from  various  parts  of  the  empire  who  were 
not  personally  related  to  his  family,  but  were  dis- 
affected at  seeing  the  power  of  the  courtiers  re- 
stored, neither  was  it  by  any  means  to  be  attrib- 
uted to  his  personal  capacity,  which  was  rather 
mediocre  both  as  general  and  as  statesman.  This 
origin  of  the  Ashikaga  family,  therefore,  made  it 
difficult  from  the  first  for  the  Shogun  of  the  line 
to  curb  the  arrogance  of  his  influential  generals. 


216  History  of  Japan 

Insurrection  against  the  Shogunate  followed  one 
after  another,  so  that  no  year  passed  without  some 
small  disturbance  somewhere. 

This  state  culminated  in  the  civil  war  begun  in 
the  Ohnin  era,  that  is  to  say,  in  1467.  The  war 
had  its  origin  in  the  quarrel  about  the  succession 
to  the  Shogunate  between  the  son  and  the  adopted 
son,  in  reality  the  younger  brother,  of  the  Shogun 
Yoshimasa.  This  family  question  of  the  Ashi- 
kaga  became  mixed  up  with  other  quarrels  about 
the  succession  in  two  of  the  influential  military 
families,  Shiba  and  Hatakeyama.  Other  shugo 
of  various  provinces  sided  with  this  or  that  party, 
brought  their  liege-men  to  Kyoto,  and  turned  the 
streets  of  the  metropolis  into  a  battle-field.  Thus 
the  most  desultory  civil  war  in  our  history  was 
waged  under  the  eyes  of  the  Emperor  and  of  the 
Shogun,  neither  of  whom  had  any  power  to  stop 
it.  After  the  burning,  plundering,  and  killing, 
carried  on  most  ruthlessly  for  nine  years,  the 
street-fighting  in  Kyoto  ceased,  leaving  almost  no 
trace  of  the  historical  city  of  yore.  The  scenes 
of  anarchy  were  then  transferred  to  the  provinces, 
and  it  took  many  years  before  the  whole  country 
became  pacified.  Nay,  complete  peace  was  not 
restored  till  the  fall  of  the  Ashikaga  Shogunate 
itself.  Such  was  one  phase  of  the  political  disin- 
tegration of  the  age,  and  its  result  was  that  Japan 
was  torn  asunder  into  a  number  of  semi-indepen- 
dent bodies,  each  with  a  shugo  at  its  head. 

If  the  process  of  the  political  decomposition  of 


Political  Disintegration        217 

the  state  had  been  limited  to  what  is  described 
above,  then  peace  might  have  reigned  at  least 
within  each  of  those  bodies.  Unfortunately,  how- 
ever, for  the  welfare  of  the  people,  none  of  these 
shugo  was  strong  enough  to  keep  order  even  with- 
in his  own  sphere  of  military  jurisdiction.  Most 
of  them  had  lost  their  military  character,  having 
become  accustomed  to  life  in  the  capital,  as  stated 
above,  and  they  left  the  care  of  their  respective 
provinces  in  the  hands  of  their  proteges,  men 
who  soon  made  themselves  independent  of  their 
patrons,  so  that  there  arose  a  number  of  minor 
political  bodies  in  the  jurisdiction  of  each  shugo. 
Again  these  proteges,  that  is  to  say,  the  heads  of 
the  minor  political  bodies,  were  put  down  in  turn 
by  their  vassals,  and  so  forth.  Moreover,  some 
of  these  minor  bodies  were  further  divided  into 
still  smaller  bodies,  while  others  became  aggran- 
dised by  annexation  by  the  stronger  of  neighbor- 
ing weaker  ones.  In  this  way  Japan  fell  into  a 
state  of  chaos,  being  an  agglomeration  of  political 
bodies  of  various  sizes,  with  masters  ever  chang- 
ing, and  with  frontiers  constantly  shifting  with- 
out any  reference  to  the  former  administrative 
boundaries.  This  second  phase  completed  the  to- 
tal disintegration  of  the  empire. 

The  last  of  the  Shoguns  who  tried  to  stem  this 
irresistible  tendency  to  disintegration  was  Yoshi- 
hisa,  the  son  of  Yoshimasa.  His  succession  to  his 
father,  as  has  already  been  described,  was  the 
cause  of  the  civil  war  of  the  Ohnin  era,  for  which, 


218  History  of  Japan 

however,  he  was  not  responsible  in  the  least,  be- 
ing only  eight  years  old  when  he  was  invested 
with  the  Shogunate  in  the  year  1473.  He  grew 
up,  however,  to  be  the  most  typical  Shogun  of 
all  the  Ashikaga.  Though  born  in  the  highest  of 
the  military  families,  he  had  as  his  mother  a 
daughter  of  a  court-noble,  and  was  educated  in 
his  boyhood  by  Kanera  Ichijo,  one  of  the  most 
learned  courtiers  of  the  time.  When  Yoshihisa 
reached  manhood,  therefore,  he  was  a  courtier 
clad  in  military  garments.  He  thought  and  acted 
as  if  he  were  a  high  Fujiwara  noble,  and  even 
had  his  household  managed  by  a  courtier. 
Through  this  confidant,  the  proprietors  de  jure  of 
manors,  that  is  to  say,  courtiers,  shrines,  and  tem- 
ples, clung  to  the  young  Shogun,  and  pressed  him 
to  coerce,  on  their  behalf,  those  arbitrary  shugo 
and  minor  captains  who  dared  impudently  to  ap- 
propriate the  whole  of  the  revenue  from  those 
manors  to  themselves,  so  that  the  share  due  to 
these  proprietors  de  jure  had  been  kept  in  Ar- 
rears for  many  years.  The  Shogun  was  easily 
persuaded,  and  Takayori  Sasaki,  the  shugo  of  the 
province  of  Ohmi,  was  first  chosen  as  the  object 
of  chastisement,  for  his  province  was  the  nearest 
to  Kyoto  and  abounded  in  those  manors  belong- 
ing to  the  courtiers  and  the  like.  It  was  in  the 
year  1487  that  Yoshihisa  in  person  led  a  puni- 
tive expedition  into  Ohmi,  crossed  lake  Biwa,  and 
pitched  his  camp  on  its  eastern  shore.  Contem- 
porary chronicles  unanimously  describe  in  vivid 


Political  Disintegration        219 

colours  how  the  gallant  and  refined  young  prince, 
clad  in  bright  military  costume,  marched  out  of 
Kyoto  surrounded  by  a  bizarre  host  of  warriors 
and  courtiers.  The  latter  group,  however,  did 
not  count  for  aught  in  warfare,  while  the  former 
followed  the  Shogun  only  halfheartedly.  It  was 
especially  so  with  those  shugo  who  were  of  the 
same  caste  and  of  the  same  status  as  the  attacked, 
and  therefore  did  not  like  to  see  him  crushed  in 
the  interest  of  the  de  jure  but  faineant  proprie- 
tors. The  victory  of  the  army  of  the  Shogun  was 
hopeless  from  the  first.  After  staying  two  years 
in  camp  Yoshihisa  died  without  being  able  to  see 
his  enemy  vanquished.  One  of  his  cousins,  who 
succeeded  to  the  Shogunate,  renewed  the  expedi- 
tion, and  at  last  ousted  the  disobedient  shugo  from 
his  province,  but  the  proprietors  de  jure  of  the 
manors  could  not  regain  their  lost  rights,  what 
was  due  to  them  having  been  usurped  by  other 
new  pretenders,  not  less  arbitrary  than  their 
predecessors. 

The  expedition  of  Yoshihisa  was  an  epoch- 
making  event  in  tHe  history  of  our  country.  To 
support  by  military  power  the  courtiers,  whose 
cup  had  already  begun  to  run  over  and  whose  in- 
terests could  not  be  always  consistent  with  the 
welfare  of  the  Shogunate,  was  evidently  a  quix- 
otic attempt.  Still  it  cannot  be  disputed  that 
Yoshihisa  fought  at  least  for  an  ideal,  however 
unrealisable  it  might  have  been.  He  reminds  us 
of  the  scions  of  the  Hohenstaufen  who  fought  in 


220        >     History  of  Japan 

Italy  for  the  imperial  ideal  traditional  in  their 
family.  The  failure  of  the  expedition  into  Ohmi 
meant  the  utter  impossibility  of  the  restoration  of 
the  courtiers'  prestige  and  the  approach  of  the  to- 
tal disappearance  of  the  manorial  system  from  the 
islands  of  Japan.  This  is  a  mighty  economical 
change  for  the  empire,  the  importance  of  which 
could  not  be  overvalued.  The  old  regime  initi- 
ated by  the  reform  of  the  Taikwa  was  going  down 
to  its  grave,  and  new  Japan  was  beginning  to 
dawn  side  by  side  with  the  momentous  political 
disintegration  of  the  country.  We  see,  indeed, 
simultaneous  with  this  political  and  economical 
change,  the  transformation  of  various  factors  of 
civilisation,  preparing  themselves  for  the  coming 
age.  The  first  turning  of  the  wheel  of  history, 
however,  depended  on  the  political  regeneration 
of  the  country  by  a  master-hand. 


CHAPTER  IX 

END  OF  MEDIAEVAL  JAPAN 

IN  order  to  see  a  nation  consolidated,  it  is  nec- 
essary not  only  to  have  a  nucleus  serving  as  a 
centre,  towards  which  the  whole  nation  might 
converge,  but  to  have  at  the  same  time  the  cen- 
tralising power  of  that  nucleus  strengthened  suffi- 
ciently to  hold  the  nation  solid  and  compact. 
Moreover,  the  constituent  parts  of  that  nation 
ought  to  have  the  capacity  to  respond  to  the  ac- 
tion emanating  from  that  common  centre  or  nu- 
cleus towards  those  parts,  and  facilitate  the  recip- 
rocal relation  between  the  centralising  and  the 
centralised.  More  than  that.  There  must  be 
formed  strong  links  between  those  component 
parts  themselves  towards  one  another.  For  if 
each  part  be  linked  only  to  a  common  centre  and 
estranged  from  other  parts,  then  there  is  a  great 
danger  of  the  breaking  asunder  of  the  whole, 
however  strong  the  centralising  force  of  that  nu- 
cleus might  be,  and  in  case  of  the  debilitation  of 
that  sole  centre,  there  might  remain  no  other 
force  alive  to  keep  the  constituent  parts  compactly 
together.  To  impart,  however,  the  consolidating 
force  to  those  component  parts,  they  should  be 

221 


222  History  of  Japan 

instituted  each  as  a  separate  organism.  In  other 
words,  unless  those  parts  constitute  themselves 
each  an  an  organic  social  and  political  body,  pro- 
vided with  the  power  of  acting  within  and  with- 
out, they  cannot  form  any  close  connection  among 
themselves  and  with  the  central  nucleus;  and  to 
be  provided  with  such  a  power,  or  to  become  an 
organism,  each  part,  too,  must  have  in  its  turn 
its  own  nucleus,  around  which  the  rest  of  that 
part  might  converge.  To  speak  summarily,  for 
a  strong  centralisation  there  must  be,  besides  one 
nucleus,  or  nucleus  of  the  first  order,  a  certain 
number  of  nuclei  of  the  second  or  minor  order, 
and  sometimes  there  must  be  nuclei  of  the  third 
and  lower  orders. 

It  might  be  deduced  from  what  is  said  above 
that  without  a  sufficient  number  of  local  centres, 
that  is  to  say,  without  the  existence  of  well-de- 
veloped minor  political  organisms,  the  political 
centre,  however  powerful  it  might  be,  would  not 
be  able  to  hold  a  country  together,  lacking  cohe- 
sion between  those  constituent  parts.  Japan  had 
long  been  in  such  a  disorderly  state  which  con- 
tinued until  the  middle  of  the  Ashikaga  period, 
that  is  to  say,  the  middle  of  the  fifteenth  century. 
The  political  influence  of  Kamakura,  though  in- 
dependent of  Kyoto,  was  of  very  short  duration, 
and  Kyoto  had  continued  on  the  whole  as  the 
sole  political  and  social  centre.  If  there  had  been 
in  the  provinces  a  place  worthy  to  be  called  a  city, 
besides  Kamakura,  it  could  only  be  sought  in 


End  of  Mediaeval  Japan       223 

Hakata  on  the  northern  coast  of  Kyushu.  Other 
places  were  hardly  to  be  termed  cities,  being  but 
little  more  than  sites  of  periodical  fairs  at  the 
utmost.  The  growth  of  the  cities  of  Sakai  and 
Yamaguchi  is  of  rather  later  origin,  dating  from 
the  middle  of  the  Ashikaga  age.  The  Emperor, 
the  Shogun,  and  one  metropolitan  city  had  domi- 
nated the  whole  of  the  country  for  a  long  time, 
so  that,  superficially  observed,  Japan  could  be  said 
to  have  been  superbly  centralised,  and  therefore 
excellently  unified.  In  reality,  however,  the  pres- 
tige of  the  Emperor  declined,  as  well  as  the  mili- 
tary power  of  the  Shogunate,  and  Kyoto,  the  site 
of  the  imperial  court  and  of  the  military  govern- 
ment, lost  the  political  influence  it  once  had  pos- 
sessed. After  all,  nothing  was  found  influential 
enough  in  the  earlier  Ashikaga  age  to  serve  by 
itself  as  a  means  of  solidifying  the  nation,  while 
there  had  not  yet  been  formed  those  minor 
provincial  centres  around  which  communities  of 
lesser  magnitude  might  crystallise.  Manors, 
which  were  the  remnants  of  the  former  ages,  were 
of  course  a  kind  of  agricultural  communities,  and 
could  be  considered  as  social  and  economical  units, 
but  they  were  politically  dependent  on  their  pro- 
prietors living  in  Kyoto  or  somewhere  else  out- 
side of  those  manors,  and  in  cultural  respects 
most  of  the  manors  counted  almost  for  nothing. 
All  Japan  was  thus  thrown  into  a  state  of  chaos, 
when  the  military  power  of  the  Ashikaga  Shogun- 
ate was  reduced  to  impotence. 


224  History  of  Japan 

This  chaotic  period  of  Japanese  history  has 
been  generally  considered  as  the  retrogressive  age 
of  our  civilisation,  quite  in  the  same  sense  in  which 
the  medieval  age  in  European  history  has  come 
to  be  designated  as  the  Dark  Ages.  It  is  a  great 
mistake,  however,  to  stigmatise  the  Ashikaga  pe- 
riod as  having  witnessed  no  progress  in  any  cul- 
tural factor,  just  as  it  has  been  a  fatal  miscon- 
ception of  early  European  historians  to  think  that 
medieval  Europe  was  indeed  dark  in  every  cul- 
tural respect.  Though  the  classicism  of  the  for- 
mer ages  might  seem  a  civilisation  of  a  far  higher 
stage  when  compared  with  the  vulgarised  culture 
of  the  later,  or  so-called  Dark  Age,  yet  the  vul- 
garisation should  not  be  necessarily  branded  as  a 
backward  movement  of  civilisation.  The  vulgari- 
sation at  least  accompanies  a  wider  propagation, 
a  deeper  permeation,  and  the  better  adaptation 
to  the  real  social  condition  of  the  time,  and 
should  not  be  looked  down  upon  as  an  absolutely 
decadent  process.  In  the  seemingly  anarchical 
period  of  the  early  Ashikaga,  Japan  had  been  un- 
dergoing, in  sooth,  an  important  change  in  social 
and  cultural  respects.  Nay,  even  politically  a 
change  of  mighty  consequence  was  in  course  of 
evolution.  Having  reached  an  extreme  state  of 
disorder,  a  germ  of  fresh  order  was  gradually 
forming  itself  out  of  necessity.  That  the  shugo 
of  this  period  held  sway  over  a  district  far  more 
extensive  than  the  land  held  by  any  of  the  shugo 
of  the  Kamakura  period,  is  in  a  sense  a  remark- 


End  of  Mediaeval  Japan       225 

able  political  progress.  Yamana,  one  of  the  most 
powerful  of  the  Ashikaga  shugo,  is  said  to  have 
possessed  about  one-sixth  of  the  whole  of  Japan, 
and  on  that  account  was  called  Lord  One-sixth. 
Such  great  feudatories  were  never  possible  in  the 
Kamakura  period.  Most  of  these  grand  lords, 
though  living  mainly  in  Kyoto,  as  was  stated  in 
the  previous  chapter,  had  their  provincial  resi- 
dences, which,  too,  were  not  so  unpretentious  as 
those  of  the  djito  of  the  Kamakura.  Each  lord 
maintained  princely  state,  and  around  his  court, 
a  thriving  social  life  must  have  grown  up,  making 
the  beginning  of  the  modern  Japanese  provincial 
towns.  The  governmental  sites  of  the  daimyo  or 
feudatories  of  the  Tokugawa  period  generally 
find  the  origin  of  their  urban  development  in  these 
residences  of  the  shugo  of  the  Ashikaga  period. 
The  trade  with  China  was  another  cause  of  the 
growth  of  modern  Japanese  cities,  especially  of 
those  which  are  situated  by  the  sea,  such  as  Sakai, 
Osaka,  Nagasaki,  and  this  development  of  the 
maritime  commercial  cities  led  naturally  to  the 
general  advancement  of  the  humanistic  culture  of 
our  country.  Our  intercourse  with  China,  the 
fountain-head  of  the  culture  of  the  East,  though 
it  had  been  suspended  between  the  governments 
since  the  end  of  the  ninth  century,  had  never  been 
abandoned  entirely,  and  merchant  ships  had  con- 
tinued to  ply  between  the  two  countries  almost 
without  interruption.  During  the  Kamakura 
Shogunate  too,  we  have  reason  to  suppose  that 


226  History  of  Japan 

this  steady  intercourse  livened  into  considerable 
activity  and  bustling  profitable  to  both  sides, 
China,  at  that  epoch  of  our  history,  being  gov- 
erned by  the  Sung  and  the  Yuan  dynasties  succes- 
sively. Sanetomo,  the  second  son  of  Yoritomo 
and  the  third  Shogun  in  Kamakura,  was  said  to 
have  built  a  ship  in  order  to  cross  over  to  that 
country.  The  port  then  trading  with  China  was 
Hakata,  and  the  privileged  ships,  which  were  lim- 
ited in  number,  must  have  been  under  the  care 
and  protection  of  the  Shogunate.  Those  ships 
carried  on  board  not  only  commodities  of  ex- 
change, but  passengers  also,  who  were  mostly 
priests.  Some  of  the  ships  even  appear  to  have 
been  sent  solely  for  trade  in  behalf  of  certain 
Buddhist  temples.  In  this  we  see  again  the  sin- 
gular coincidence  between  the  histories  of  Europe 
and  of  Japan.  The  Levantine  trade  of  the  Italian 
cities  in  the  age  of  the  Crusades  counted  among 
its  participators  many  churches  and  priests  also. 
It  is  needless  to  say  that  those  Japanese  priests, 
who  went  abroad  accompanying  adventurous 
merchants  and  came  back  loaded  with  profound 
religious  knowledge,  did  at  the  same  time  con- 
spicuous service  in  promoting  the  general  culture 
of  our  country.  What  was  most  remarkable,  how- 
ever, was  that  there  were  not  a  few  Chinese  Bud- 
dhists, who  came  over  to  this  country  and  settled 
here.  Their  main  purpose  was  of  course  to  prop- 
agate the  doctrine  of  the  Zen  sect,  which  had  got 
the  upper  hand  in  China  at  that  time.  They  were 


End  of  Mediaeval  Japan       227 

cordially  welcomed  by  the  Shogunate,  and  later 
by  the  Imperial  Court  too,  and  were  installed  in 
the  noted  temples  of  Kamakura  and  Kyoto  as 
chief  priests,  and  besides  their  religious  activi- 
ties, these  learned  men  contributed  much  toward 
the  introduction  of  contemparary  Chinese  civilisa- 
tion in  general,  in  no  less  degree  than  did  the 
Japanese  priests.  Among  the  various  depart- 
ments of  knowledge  which  these  priests  imparted 
to  the  warriors  and  courtiers,  one  of  the  most 
important  was  instruction  in  the  pure  Chinese 
classics  and  in  secular  literature.  There  are  still 
extant  in  our  country  not  a  small  number  of  rare 
books  printed  in  the  Sung  and  the  Yuan  dynasty 
and  imported  hither  at  that  time,  and  these  mani- 
fest how  rich  in  variety  were  the  books  then  in- 
troduced to  Japan.  The  founding  of  the  famous 
library  at  Kanazawa  near  Kamakura,  by  a  learned 
member  of  the  Hojo  family  in  a  time  not  far  dis- 
tant from  that  of  the  Mongolian  invasion,  may 
perhaps  be  attributed  to  the  influence  of  some  of 
these  priests. 

Without  doubt  the  invasion  of  the  Mongolian 
host  put  a  momentary  stop  to  this  mutual  inter- 
course. It  seems,  however,  that  the  trade  with 
China  was  revived  soon  after  the  war,  and  con- 
tinued down  to  the  time  of  the  Ashikaga,  with- 
out being  interrupted  materially  even  by  the  long 
civil  war.  Far  from  cessation  or  interruption,  the 
official  intercourse  between  the  two  states  which 
had  been  broken  off  for  some  years  was  during 


228  History  of  Japan 

this  civil  war  restored  to  its  former  amicable  con- 
dition. It  was  while  the  internecine  strife  was 
raging  over  the  whole  of  the  island  Empire,  that 
a  change  ol  dynasty  took  place  in  China.  The 
Mongols  were  driven  away  to  their  original  abode 
in  the  desert,  and  in  their  place  reigned  in  China 
the  new  dynasty  of  the  Ming,  founded  by  a  gen- 
eral of  Chinese  blood.  This  founder  of  the  Ming 
sent  an  embassy  to  Japan  to  announce  the  inaug- 
uration of  his  line  and  to  secure  the  coast  of  his 
empire  from  inroads  and  pillage  by  Japanese  pir- 
ates, who,  since  several  centuries,  had  been  ravag- 
ing the  Korean  and  then  the  Chinese  coast,  and 
became  especially  rampant  during  the  civil  war, 
being  let  loose  by  the  unexampled  lawless  state 
of  our  country.  The  ambassador  of  the  Chinese 
emperor,  however,  could  not  at  once  reach  Kyoto, 
which  was  his  destination.  For  at  that  time  in 
Kyushu  ruled  an  imperial  prince  who  was  a  scion 
of  the  branch  antagonistic  to  that  which  reigned 
in  the  metropolis  supported  by  the  Ashikaga,  and 
the  prince-governor,  as  he  was  then  the  master 
of  the  historic  trading  port  of  Hakata,  inter- 
cepted the  Chinese  ambasdor  on  his  way,  received 
him,  and  sent  him  back.  This  happened  in  the 
year  1369.  Seven  years  afterwards  this  very 
prince  sent  an  envoy  to  the  Chinese  government, 
perhaps  with  the  object  of  obtaining  some  mate- 
rial assistance  from  beyond  the  sea,  in  order  to 
make  himself  strong  enough  to  overpower  his 
enemy  in  Japan,  the  Ashikaga  party.  As  the 


End  of  Mediaeval  Japan       229 

sender  was  a  prince  of  the  blood  imperial,  the  en- 
voy sent  by  him  seems  to  have  been  regarded  as 
if  he  were  the  representative  of  the  real  govern- 
ment of  Japan,  and  the  intercourse  between  the 
two  countries  thus  began  to  take  official  form 
again.  When  the  civil  war  ended  in  the  ultimate 
victory  of  the  Ashikaga  party  and  the  annihilation 
of  all  its  opponents,  this  international  relation  ini- 
tiated by  the  prince  of  Kyushu  was  taken  up  by 
Yoshimitsu,  the  third  Shogun  of  the  Ashikaga, 
who  sent  an  embassy  to  the  Chinese  government  of 
the  Ming  in  the  year  1401.  After  this  we  see  suc- 
cessive exchanges  of  embassies  between  the  Chi- 
nese government  and  our  Ashikaga  Shogunate,  the 
latter  vouchsafing  the  orderliness  of  our  trading 
people  on  the  Chinese  coast  and  promising  to 
bridle  the  piratical  activities  of  our  adventurers, 
and  the  former  giving  in  return  munificent  presents 
to  the  Shogunate.  At  that  time  what  our  forefath- 
ers suffered  most  from  was  the  scarcity  of  coins, 
for  although  the  beginning  of  the  coinage  in  our 
country  is  so  old  that  it  has  been  lost  in  the  remot- 
est past,  yet  for  a  long  period  not  enough  care  was 
exercised  to  provide  the  country  with  sufficient 
money  in  coins  of  different  denominations  to 
cover  the  necessities  of  the  growing  industries. 
No  wonder  that  the  presents  of  copper  coins  by 
the  emperors  of  the  Ming  were  gladly  received 
by  the  Shogunate,  and  this  Chinese  money,  to- 
gether with  that  obtained  by  sale  of  our  commodi- 
ties, was  in  wide  circulation  throughout  Japan, 


230  History  of  Japan 

many  of  them  having  remained  to  this  day,  and 
served  as  auxiliary  coins.  Among  other  things 
of  Chinese  provenance  earnestly  coveted  by  us, 
perhaps  the  most  desired  were  books.  Besides 
these  two  articles,  copper  coins  and  books,  many 
rarities  and  useful  commodities  must  have  been 
imported  by  these  ships,  which  carried  the  envoys 
on  board,  and  rendered  a  not  insignificant  service 
in  altering  for  the  better  the  general  ways  of  liv- 
ing of  the  people  of  our  country. 

The  chief  emporium  of  the  trade  with  China 
in  the  early  Ashikaga  period  was  of  course  Ha- 
kata  in  Kyushu  as  before.  As  the  family  of  the 
Ouchi,  however,  held  the  strait  of  Shimonoseki, 
the  gateway  of  the  Inland  Sea,  and  as  Hakata  it- 
self came  afterwards  under  the  rule  of  the  same 
family,  the  Chinese  trade  had  been  for  a  long 
time  controlled  or  rather  monopolised  by  this 
lord  of  the  province  of  Nagato.  The  prosperity 
of  the  inland  city  of  Yamaguchi,  the  residential 
seat  of  the  Ouchi  family,  is  to  be  ascribed  also  to 
the  same  circumstance.  Moreover,  the  growth 
of  the  port  of  Sakai  in  the  easternmost  recess  of 
the  Inland  Sea  owes  its  origin  to  the  fact  that 
the  city  was  once  under  the  lordship  of  the  same 
Ouchi,  and  a  close  historical  connection  was  there- 
by created  between  it  and  the  port  of  Shimono- 
seki. It  was  by  the  co-operation  of  many  other 
political  causes,  however,  that  the  centre  of  the 
foreign  trade  was  shifted  from  Hakata  to  Sakai, 
and  when  intercourse  with  western  nations  was 


End  of  Mediaeval  Japan       231 

opened,  it  was  the  latter  and  not  the  former, 
which  became  the  staple  market  of  import  and 
export. 

The  growth  of  the  Japanese  cities,  actuated  by 
the  political  and  commercial  conditions  of  the 
country  as  stated  above,  is  a  phenomenon  which 
had  much  to  do  with  the  progress  of  our  civilisa- 
ion  in  general.  Notwithstanding  the  manifold 
drawbacks  necessarily  accompanying  urban  life, 
cities  have  been,  since  very  ancient  times,  one  of 
the  most  potent  agents  in  the  history' of  the  East 
as  well  as  of  the  West,  in  raising  the  general 
standard  of  culture  to  a  high  level.  Rural  life, 
whatever  sonorous  praise  be  chanted  for  it,  would 
not  have  been  able  by  itself  to  elevate  the  stand- 
ard of  manners  and  behaviour  much  above  a  blunt 
rustic  naivete.  In  this  respect  we  can  observe  a 
remarkable  difference  between  the  Ashikaga  and 
the  preceding  ages,  a  difference  quite  similar  in 
nature  to  that  which  existed  between  the  eleventh 
and  the  twelfth  centuries  in  the  history  of  Europe. 
The  sudden  increase,  in  Japan,  of  printed  books 
in  number  and  variety  shows  it  more  than  clearly. 

The  history  of  printing  in  Japan  goes  back  to 
the  middle  of  the  eighth  century,  but  at  the  begin- 
ning the  matter  printed  was  limited  to  detached 
leaflets.  What  was  printed  the  earliest  in  the 
form  of  a  book  and  is  still  extant,  bears  the  date 
of  1088.  After  that,  however,  very  few  books 
had  been  printed  for  a  long  time.  Moreover, 
those  few  were  exclusively  religious.  It  was  in 


232  History  of  Japan 

the  year  1247  that  one  of  the  commentaries  on 
the  Lun-yu,  the  famous  work  of  the  teachings 
of  Confucius,  was  put  into  a  reprint,  after  the 
model  of  a  contemporary  Chinese  edition,  that  is 
to  say,  of  the  Sung  age.  That  this  non-religious 
or  non-Buddhist  work  was  first  edited  in  Japan 
in  the  middle  of  the  Kamakura  period,  proves  the 
enlargement  of  the  circle  of  readers  in  Chinese 
classics  by  the  participation  of  the  warrior-class. 
Such  editing  of  secular  Chinese  works,  however, 
was  discontinued  for  three-quarters  of  a  century, 
and  was  not  resumed  until  1322,  only  ten  years 
before  the  outbreak  of  the  long  civil  war.  The 
book  printed  at  the  latter  date  was  after  one  of 
the  Chinese  editions  of  the  Shu-king,  another  piece 
of  Confucian  literature.  This  was  followed  by 
the  reprinting  of  many  other  non-religious  Chi- 
nese works.  The  civil  war  too  astonishes  us  not 
only  in  that  it  did  not  hinder  the  continuance  of 
the  reprints  of  useful  Chinese  originals,  but  also 
in  that  the  number  of  books  reprinted  has  sud- 
denly increased  in  general  since  this  period. 
Among  the  books  issued  during  the  war,  a  com- 
mentary on  the  Lun-yu,  of  a  text  different  from 
that  above  mentioned,  and  said  to  have  been  made 
at  Sakai,  was  the  most  remarkable.  The  edition 
was  dated  1364,  and  reprinted  again  and  again 
in  several  places.  In  this  case  the  place  where 
the  printing  was  first  undertaken  demands  also 
our  attention.  Hitherto  almost  all  the  books  had 
been  published  in  Kyoto,  except  some  tomes  of 


End  of  Mediaeval  Japan       233 

Buddhist  literature,  which  occasionally  had  been 
edited  in  the  convents  at  Nara  or  Koya.  But  now 
printing  began  to  be  undertaken  not  only  in  these 
historical  and  sacred  places,  but  in  purely  com- 
mercial cities  of  quite  recent  growth,  as  Sakai. 
It  is  said  that  about  this  time  several  kinds  of 
books  of  Chinese  literature  were  edited  in  the 
city  of  Hakata,  and  that  it  was  a  naturalised  Chi- 
nese who  had  started  the  undertaking  there. 
Another  tradition  tells  us  that  two  Chinese  block- 
engravers  came  and  settled  at  Hakata,  and 
engaged  in  their  professional  business,  which  con- 
tributed much  to  the  increase  of  reprinted  books. 
Shortly  after  the  civil  war,  in  the  beginning  of  the 
fifteenth  century,  books  were  printed  in  other 
places  more  remotely  situated  in  the  provinces, 
such  as  Yamaguchi  and  Ashikaga.  The  last- 
named  was  the  cradle  of  the  Shogunate  House 
of  the  Ashikaga,  and  there  just  at  this  time  a  col- 
lege was  founded,  or  according  to  some,  restored, 
by  Norizane  Uyesugi,  one  of  the  most  influential 

'  retainers  of  the  Shogunate  in  eastern  Japan. 
Thus,  in  the  latter  half  of  the  fifteenth  century, 

v  the  reprinting  of  Chinese  classics  became  a  fash- 
ion throughout  the  empire.  In  addition  to  the 
ever-increasing  number  of  books  reprinted  at  Kyo- 
to and  Sakai,  we  find  now  those  printed  at  places 
as  far  remote  as  Kagoshima  in  the  west.  In  the 
east  there  seems  to  have  lived  in  the  neighbor- 
hood of  Odawara,  a  new  political  centre,  at  least 
one  engraver,  engaged  in  block-cutting  for  books. 


234  History  of  Japan 

Summing  up  what  has  been  stated  above,  the  in- 
crease of  the  number  of  book-editing  localities 
meant  the  increase  of  minor  cultural  centres  in 
the  provinces,  that  is  to  say,  the  wider  diffusion 
of  civilisation  in  the  empire. 

Another  important  fact  to  be  specially  noticed 
is  that  the  varieties  of  books  reprinted  became 
gradually  multifarious.  Though  those  books 
printed  in  the  Ashikaga  age  were  mostly  repro- 
ductions of  Chinese  works,  and  very  few  purely 
Japanese  books  were  edited  until  the  end  of  the 
age,  yet  those  Chinese  works  themselves,  which 
were  reprinted,  became  more  and  more  diversified 
in  kind.  Not  only  Buddhist  and  Confucian  clas- 
sics, and  works  of  purely  literary  character, 
especially  poetical  works  and  books  on  versifica- 
tion, but  several  medical  works  also  were  re- 
printed and  issued  in  the  later  Ashikaga  age.  The 
study  of  medicine  had  been  revived  since  the  civil 
war  by  the  intercourse  with  China,  and  soon  after 
the  war,  some  Japanese  students  went  abroad  to 
learn  the  science  there.  The  reprinting  of  medi- 
cal books,  therefore,  was  to  be  considered  as  a 
token  of  the  growing  necessity  for  medical  stud- 
ents ever  increasing  in  our  country,  and  the  be- 
ginning of  the  revival  of  scientific  education. 

As  to  the  works  of  Japanese  authors  which 
were  put  into  print,  the  first  publication  seems  to 
have  been  that  of  religious  treatise  in  Chinese 
by  the  priest  Honen,  printed  at  the  beginning  of 
the  Kamakura  period,  and  the  work  was  many 


End  of  Mediaeval  Japan       235 

times  reprinted  afterwards.  Another  work  by  the 
same  priest,  which  was  written  in  Japanese,  was 
issued  at  the  end  of  the  same  rjeriod.  During  the 
civil  war  numerous  works,  mostly  in  Chinese,  by 
the  Japanese  Zen  priests  were  published,  among 
which  the  history  of  Buddhism  in  Japan,  entitled 
the  Genko-shakusho,  was  the  most  noteworthy, 
and  was  therefore  reprinted  over  and  over  again. 
A  chronological  table  of  the  history  of  Japan, 
and  two  editions  of  the  Joyei  Laws  were  subse- 
quently printed.  A  text-book  for  children,  to 
train  them  in  the  use  of  Chinese  ideographs,  was 
first  printed  at  the  close  of  the  Ashikaga  period, 
and  the  demand  for  the  appearance  of  such  a  book 
proves  that  the  education  of  children  began  to 
arouse  the  general  attention. 

From  what  is  said  above,  we  can  safely  con- 
clude that  during  the  course  of  the  Ashikaga  pe- 
riod, the  level  of  civilisation  of  our  country  had 
been  raised  in  a  marked  degree,  and  that  at  the 
same  time  there  arose  one  after  another  numerous 
cultural  centres  in  the  provinces,  which  were  in 
their  main  features  nothing  but  Kyoto  on  a  small 
scale,  but  nevertheless  contributed  not  the  least 
to  the  betterment  of  national  civilisation  in  gen- 
eral owing  to  their  common  rivalry.  One  would 
perhaps  entertain  some  doubt  as  to  the  veracity 
of  the  assertion,  that  in  an  age  such  as  of  the 
Ashikaga,  when  political  anarchy  was  in  full  play, 
so  remarkable  an  advancement  had  been  steadily 
achieved  by  our  forefathers.  If  he  would,  how- 


236  History  of  Japan 

ever,  look  at  the  history  of  the  Italian  renais- 
sance, then  he  would  not  be  at  a  loss  to  see  that 
political  disorder  does  not  necessarily  thwart  the 
progress  of  civilisation,  but  on  the  contrary  often 
stimulates  it. 

The  territories  owned  by  great  feudatories  or 
daimyo  in  the  Ashikaga  age  were  by  no  means 
compact  entities  definitely  bounded.  Their  fron- 
tiers constantly  shifted  to  and  fro  according  to 
frequently  recurring  waxings  and  wanings  in 
strength  of  this  or  that  daimyo,  and  these  fluctua- 
tions depended,  in  their  turn,  on  the  results  some- 
times of  petty  skirmishes  and  sometimes  of  po- 
litical intrigues,  so  that  an  unwavering  steadiness 
was  the  least  thing  to  be  expected  at  that  time. 
This  politically  unsettled  condition  of  Japan,  how- 
ever, was  in  a  certain  sense  a  boon  to  our  coun- 
try, for  it  took  away  all  the  hindrances  which  lay 
in  the  way  of  internal  communication,  and  paved 
the  path  to  the  ultimate  political  unity  of  the 
empire.  I  do  not  say  of  course  that  travelling 
at  that  time  was  quite  safe  from  any  kind  of 
molestation,  but  the  main  obstacles  to  commimi- 
cation  were  rather  of  a  social  than  of  a  political 
nature.  In  other  words,  they  were  of  kinds  which 
could  not  be  got  rid  of  in  a  like  stage  of  civilisa- 
tion, even  if  Japan  had  been  politically  not  dis- 
membered, and  adventurous  merchants  did  not 
shrink  from  facing  such  difficulties.  No  need  to 
speak  of  those  piratical  traders,  who  went  out 
from  the  western  islands  and  the  coastal  regions 


End  of  Mediaeval  Japan       237 

of  the  Inland  Sea  on  their  devastating  errands 
to  the  Korean  and  the  Chinese  coasts.  The  less 
warlike  merchants  ventured  to  trade  with  the 
Ainu,  who  had  retired  into  the  island  of  Hok- 
kaido, and  had  not  been  heard  of  since  the  be- 
ginning of  the  Ashikaga  period. 

Among  the  itinerants  travelling  a  long  dis- 
tance may  be  counted  the  professional  literati  also, 
the  experts  in  the  art  of  composing  the  renga,  the 
short  Japanese  poems.  They  went  about  through- 
out the  provinces,  visiting  feudal  lords  in  their 
castles,  teaching  them  the  literary  pastimes,  thus 
imparting  their  first  lesson  in  aesthetic  education 
to  those  who  had  never  tasted  it.  Courtiers,  too, 
weakminded  as  they  were,  travelled  great  dis- 
tances, to  call  on  some  rich  bourgeois  or  powerful 
daimyo,  who  were  thinking  of  becoming  their 
munificent  patrons,  and  taught  them,  besides  the 
afore-said  art  of  composing  Japanese  poems,  the 
sport  of  kicking  leather  balls  and  other  leisurely 
pastimes  which  had  been  the  favourites  among 
the  courtiers  in  Kyoto,  and  received  in  return  a 
generous  hospitality  and  fees  for  the  lessons  which 
they  gave.  Buddhist  priests  were  the  third  set 
of  busy  travellers  of  the  time.  Missionary  activi- 
ties had  not  much  relaxed  since  the  Kamakura 
period,  though  no  influential  sect  had  been  started 
in  this  age.  Every  nook  and  corner  of  the  island 
empire  had  received  the  footprints  of  these  re- 
ligious itinerants,  and  some  of  the  more  enter- 
prising priests  even  crossed  the  sea  to  the  island 


238  History  of  Japan 

of  what  is  now  Hokkaido  in  order  to  preach  to 
the  Ainu  dwelling  there.  Pilgrims  to  the  shrines 
of  Ise,  where  the  ancestress  of  the  Imperial  line 
was  enshrined,  may  also  be  counted  among  the 
busy  interprovincial  travellers. 

All  these  wanderers  served  not  only  to  trans- 
mit to  distant  provincial  towns  the  culture  engen- 
dered and  nourished  in  the  metropolis,  but  also 
to  make  the  intercourse  between  the  minor  cul- 
tural centres  more  intimate  than  before,  so  as  to 
spread  a  civilisation  of  a  uniform  standard  and 
nature  throughout  the  whole  of  the  empire.  Ja- 
pan was  thus  for  the  first  time  unified  in  her  civili- 
sation in  order  to  prepare  herself  for  a  solid  po- 
litical unification. 

Let  me  repeat  that  Japan  of  the  Ashikaga  age 
had  within  herself  no  constant  political  boundaries 
nor  any  other  artificial  barriers  to  impede  the 
people  of  one  province  nor  of  the  territory  of  one 
daimyo  from  going  to  another  province  or  the 
territory  of  another  daimyo,  and  this,  in  a  great 
measure,  facilitated  communications  between  the 
inhabitants  of  different  provinces.  The  fact  that 
the  college  at  Ashikaga  in  eastern  Japan  was, 
notwithstanding  its  insufficient  accommodation, 
thronged  with  pupils  from  various  parts  of  the 
country,  even  from  a  province  so  far  off  from 
Kyoto  as  Satsuma,  proves  that  bad  roads  and 
poor  means  of  conveyance  did  not  obstruct  the 
Japanese  of  that  time  from  traversing  great  dis- 
tances in  order  to  get  a  liberal  education,  and 


End  of  Mediaeval  Japan       239 

such  activity  and  lively  traffic  would  naturally 
tend  to  the  formation  of  big  emporiums  here  and 
there  within  the  empire.  Unfortunately  the  geo- 
graphical features  of  our  country  did  not  allow 
it  to  see  a  great  number  of  such  large  commercial 
cities  formed  within  it,  as  the  Hanseatic  towns 
had  been  formed  in  medieval  Germany,  although 
we  find  very  close  resemblances  between  Germany 
of  the  twelfth  and  of  the  thirteenth  century  and 
Japan  under  the  Ashikaga  regime  as  regards  their 
political  conditions.  The  only  one  of  the  Japanese 
cities  which  had  ever  attained  such  a  height  of 
prosperity  as  to  be  fairly  matched  with  the  free 
cities  of  the  Hansa  was  Sakai  in  the  province 
of  Idzumi. 

The  city  of  Sakai,  as  its  name,  which  means 
in  the  Japanese  tongue  "the  Boundary,"  denotes, 
was  situated  just  on  the  boundary  line  of  the  two 
adjoining  provinces  Settsu  and  Idzumi,  and  at  the 
quondam  estuary  of  the  river  Yamato.  The  fron- 
tier-line, however,  and  the  course  of  the  river, 
were  afterwards  changed,  so  that  the  city  is  now 
entirely  included  within  the  province  of  Idzumi, 
and  there  is  no  river  running  near  the  city.  The 
fact  that  it  was  once  a  border  town  shows  that  it 
could  never  have  been  the  seat  of  the  provincial 
government.  Neither  had  it  ever  been  the  resi- 
dence of  any  powerful  feudal  lord  during  the 
whole  military  regime.  Moreover,  nature  has 
bestowed  no  special  favour  on  the  city.  The  bay 
of  Sakai  is  very  widely  open,  affording  no  pro- 


240  History  of  Japan 

tection  against  the  west  wind.  In  addition  to 
that,  it  has  been  very  shallow  since  old  times. 
Even  in  an  undeveloped  stage  of  ship-building, 
the  port  was  unfit  for  the  mooring  of  vessels  of  a 
size  as  large  as  the  junks  trading  with  China  were 
at  that  time,  so  that  they  had  to  be  equipped 
somewhere  else  in  a  neighbouring  harbour,  and 
then  brought  and  anchored  far  off  from  the  shore 
in  the  bay  of  Sakai.  The  only  geographical  ad- 
vantage of  the  port  lay  in  the  fact  that  the  short- 
est sea-route  to  the  island  of  Shikoku  started 
thence.  The  first  impulse  to  the  development  of 
the  city  seems  to  have  been  given  during  the  civil 
war,  for  it  was  the  nearest  access  to  the  sea  for 
one  of  the  parties  which  had  its  stronghold  in 
the  mountainous  region  of  the  province  of  Yam- 
ato,  adjacent  to  Idzumi.  At  the  end  of  the  war, 
the  port  came,  as  before  stated,  under  the  rule 
of  the  family  of  Ouchi,  and  from  Ouchi  it  passed 
into  the  hands  of  the  family  of  Hosokawa,  also 
one  of  the  chief  vassals  of  the  Ashikaga  Shogun- 
ate,  holding  the  north-eastern  part  of  the  island 
of  Shikoku,  and  Sakai  serving  the  family  always 
as  the  landing-place  of  its  followers,  when  they 
were  on  their  way  to  Kyoto,  to  pay  their  respects 
to  the  Shogun  or  to  fight  there  for  their  own  in- 
terests. On  account  of  this  usefulness  the  har- 
bour-city of  Sakai  had  been  granted  privileges 
by  the  hereditary  chief  of  the  Hosokawa,  as  a 
recompense  for  the  assistance  given  by  the  mer- 
chants of  the  city,  and  those  same  privileges,  in 


End  of  Mediaeval  Japan       241 

extent,  amounted  to  almost  as  much  as  the  munici- 
pal freedom  enjoyed  by  the  free  cities  of  Europe. 
The  administration  of  the  city  was  in  the  hands 
of  a  few  wealthy  merchants,  and  was  rarely  in- 
terfered with  by  its  feudal  lord.  Among  the  mer- 
chants there  were  ten,  at  first,  who  monopolised 
the  municipal  government,  each  of  them  being 
very  rich  as  the  proprietors  of  certain  storehouses 
on  the  beach,  the  rents  of  which  paid  them  a  good 
income.  In  the  later  Ashikaga  age,  however,  we 
hear  the  names  of  the  thirty-six  municipal  coun- 
cillors of  Sakai.  This  increase  in  the  number 
might  perhaps  have  been  the  result  of  the  growth 
in  opulence  of  the  citizens.  In  short,  though  the 
city  had  been  under  the  oligarchical  rule  of  the 
wealthy  merchants  of  the  city,  like  Venice  and 
Florence  in  medieval  Italy,  yet  it  was  none  the 
less  autonomous,  which  is  quite  an  exceptional 
case  in  the  whole  course  of  the  history  of  our 
country. 

The  golden  age  of  the  city  of  Sakai  dates  from 
the  year  1476  or  thereabouts,  when  a  squadron 
trading  with  China  first  sailed  out  from  the  har- 
bour. Until  that  time  all  the  vessels  plying  be- 
tween this  country  and  China  used  to  set  out  from 
Hakata  or  from  Hyogo,  which  is  nearly  the  same 
thing  as  Kobe.  Although  the  adventurous  mer- 
chants of  Sakai  carried  their  trade  before  this 
time  as  far  as  the  islands  of  Loo-choo,  and  often 
participated  in  the  Chinese  trade  also,  yet  no 
vessel  had  ever  started  from  there  for  China  till 


242  History  of  Japan 

then.  That  Sakai  became  at  this  date  a  chief 
trading  port  dealing  with  China  might  presumably 
have  been  owing  to  the  intercession  of  its  heredi- 
tary lord  Hosokawa,  but  the  determining  cause 
of  this  assumption  of  such  an  honourable  position 
among  the  commercial  cities  of  Japan  must  have 
been  the  indisputable  superiority  of  the  material 
strength  of  the  city.  Many  of  the  higher  vassals 
of  the  Shogunate  borrowed  money  from  the  mer- 
chants of  Sakai  in  order  to  equip  their  soldiers. 
Nay,  even  the  Shogunate  itself  had  often  to  mort- 
gage its  landed  estates  to  the  merchants  of  the  city 
in  order  to  save  its  treasury  from  running  short. 
The  wealth  of  the  citizens  enabled  them  to  fortify 
their  city  very  strongly,  by  surrounding  it  with  a 
deep  moat,  and  to  enlist  into  their  service  a  great 
number  of  knights-errant,  who  abounded  in  Japan 
at  that  time.  These,  together  with  the  conscious- 
ness of  indispensable  assistance  rendered  to  the 
Shogunate,  to  various  great  feudatories  and  con- 
dottieri,  emboldened  the  citizens  to  defy  the  other- 
wise formidable  military  powers,  and  those  war- 
riors, on  the  other  hand,  who  owed  much  to  the 
pecuniary  aid  of  the  Sakai  merchants,  could  but 
treat  the  latter  with  great  consideration,  which 
was  unwonted  at  that  time.  Although  the  citi- 
zens of  Sakai  were  not  entirely  free  from  the 
sufferings  of  the  war,  for  they  had  often  to  quar- 
ter soldiers  in  their  houses,  yet  no  battle  was  al- 
lowed to  be  fought  within  the  city,  notwithstand- 


End  of  Mediaeval  Japan       243 

ing  that  a  most  sanguinary  war  was  raging  all 
around  in  the  empire. 

It  was  natural,  therefore,  that,  after  the  civil 
war  of  the  Ohnin  era,  Sakai  should  be  considered 
safer  to  live  in  than  Kyoto.  Sakai  became  the 
asylum  for  the  civilisation  of  Japan,  to  save  it 
from  utter  destruction.  Poets,  painters,  musi- 
cians, and  singers,  who  had  found  living  in  the 
turbulent  metropolis  intolerably  hard,  sought 
shelter  in  Sakai,  and  there  occupied  themselves 
quietly  with  their  own  professions.  Various  hand- 
icrafts, such  as  lacquering,  porcelain-making,  and 
weaving  were  all  started  there  with  enormous 
success.  Especially  as  to  the  weaving,  it  is  said 
that  this  industry,  which  had  once  flourished  and 
been  afterwards  abandoned  in  Kyoto  on  account 
of  the  political  disturbances  there,  was  not  only 
continued  at  Sakai,  but  also  improved  by  the  Chi- 
nese weavers,  who  repaired  to  the  city  and  taught 
the  natives  the  art  of  making  various  costly  tex- 
tiles of  Chinese  invention.  In  some  respects  the 
textiles  of  the  Nishijin,  now  one  of  the  specialties 
of  Kyoto,  may  be  said  to  be  the  continuation  of 
the  Sakai  looms. 

Another  kind  of  industry,  which  developed  in 
the  city  in  the  later  Ashikaga  period,  was  the 
manufacture  of  fire-arms.  Immediately  after  the 
introduction  of  fire-arms  by  a  Portuguese  in  the 
year  1541,  a  merchant  of  Sakai  happened  to  learn 
the  art  of  making  guns  somewhere  or  other  in 
Kyushu,  and  after  his  return  to  the  city  he  began 


244  History  of  Japan 

to  practise  there  the  business  he  had  learnt.  Sa- 
kai  thus  became  the  origin  of  the  propagation,  in 
central  and  eastern  Japan,  of  the  use  of  the  new 
arm. 

From  what  has  been  described  above,  the 
reader  would  easily  understand  that  the  intellec- 
tual level  of  the  citizens  of  Sakai  stood  much 
higher  than  that  of  the  average  Japanese  of  that 
time.  Wit  and  pleasantry  were  the  accomplish- 
ments highly  prized  there,  so  that  the  city  pro- 
duced out  of  its  inhabitants  a  large  number  of 
versatile  diplomatists,  story-tellers,  and  buffoons. 
As  their  economic  conditions  were  very  easy,  the 
social  life  of  the  city  was  polished,  enlightened, 
and  even  luxurious.  The  manufacture  of  sake, 
the  Japanese  favourite  drink  made  from  rice, 
was  highly  developed  in  the  city,  and  the  fame  of 
the  Sakai-tub  was  renowned  the  country  round. 
To  protect  the  brewers,  the  Shogunate  issued  an 
order  forbidding  the  importation  of  sake  into  the 
city.  The  tea-ceremony  and  the  flower-trimming, 
two  fashionable  pastimes  already  in  vogue  at  that 
time,  were  eagerely  practised  here  by  wealthy 
merchants.  Many  famous  experts  in  this  sort  of 
amusement  were  found  among  the  inhabitants  of 
the  city,  and  they  were  generally  connoisseurs 
highly  skilled  in  the  fine  arts,  as  Sen-no-Rikyu, 
for  example.  Various  curios,  native  and  foreign, 
were  bought  and  sold  there  at  exorbitant  high 
prices. 

The  prosperous  condition  of  the  city  induced 


End  of  Mediaeval  Japan       245 

many  Buddhists,  especially  the  priests  of  the 
Jodo-shinshu,  the  most  active  sect  of  Japanese 
Buddhism  at  that  time,  to  try  their  propaganda 
in  the  city.  They  had  numerous  temples  built, 
and  by  lending  to  the  merchants  their  influence  at 
the  Shogun's  court  obtained  from  it  the  privilege 
of  trading  with  China,  thus  making  common  cause 
with  the  citizens  of  that  port.  The  earlier  Chris- 
tian missionaries,  too,  endeavoured  to  make  this 
city  the  centre  of  their  movement.  It  was  indeed 
at  the  end  of  the  year  1550,  that  Francis  Xavier, 
who  was  not  only  the  greatest  missionary  whom 
Japan  has  ever  received  from  the  West,  but  also 
one  of  the  greatest  men  in  the  world  too,  arrived 
at  the  city  from  Yamaguchi  on  his  way  to  Kyoto. 
Though  he  could  achieve  nothing  noteworthy  dur- 
ing his  short  stay  here,  on  account  of  illness,  yet 
by  him  the  first  seed  of  Christianity  was  sown  in 
the  central  regions  of  the  empire,  and  ten  years 
later  the  first  Christian  hymn  was  sung  in  the 
church  founded  in  the  city. 

The  civilisation  of  the  city  of  Sakai  represented 
that  of  the  whole  empire  in  the  later  Ashikaga 
age,  manifested  in  its  most  glaring  colours.  The 
essential  character  of  the  civilisation  was  not  aris- 
tocratic, but  bourgeois.  The  lower  strata  of  the 
people  still  had  nothing  to  do  with  it.  It  is  true 
that  we  can  recognise  already  at  this  period 
the  beginning  of  the  proletariat  movement. 
The  frequent  disturbances  raised  by  apaches  in 
the  streets  of  Kyoto  and  the  insurrections  of  agri- 


246  History  of  Japan 

cultural  workers  in  the  provinces,  remind  us  of 
the  Peasants'  War  in  the  time  of  the  Reforma- 
tion in  Europe.  Their  demands  as  well  as  their 
connection  with  the  religious  agitation  of  the  time 
closely  resembled  those  of  the  followers  of  Goetz 
von  Berlichingen.  They  could  not,  however,  se- 
cure any  permanent  result  by  their  insurrections, 
so  that  the  character  of  the  civilisation  remained 
essentially  bourgeois,  not  having  suffered  any 
marked  change  from  those  disturbances. 

The  civilisation  of  the  bourgeois  cannot  but  be 
individualistic,  and  its  main  difference  from  that 
of  the  aristocracy  lies  also  herein.  It  has  been  so 
in  Europe,  and  it  could  not  have  been  otherwise 
in  our  country.  The  fact  that  individualism  got 
the  upper  hand  in  the  Ashikaga  age  may  be 
proved  by  a  phenomenon  in  the  history  of  Jap- 
anese art.  Portrait-painting  had  made  some  pro- 
gress already  in  the  Kamakura  period,  as  was 
stated  in  the  foregoing  chapter.  The  artistic  de- 
velopment in  this  branch  of  painting  made  it  in- 
dependent of  religious  pictures.  The  portrait- 
paintings  of  the  age,  however,  even  those  executed 
by  such  eminent  masters  as  Takanobu  and  Nobu- 
zane,  are  only  images  of  the  typical  courtier  or 
warrior,  not  to  mention  the  stiffness  of  the  style. 
Very  little  of  the  individuality  of  the  persons  rep- 
resented was  manifested  in  them.  The  scroll- 
paintings,  to  which  the  attention  of  most  of  the 
artists  of  the  age  was  directed,  contained  pictures 
of  many  persons,  but  to  depict  scenes  was  the  chief 


End  of  Mediaeval  Japan       247 

aim  of  scroll-paintings,  so  that  no  serious  pains 
were  taken  in  the  delineation  of  individuals.  That 
portrait-painting  remained  thus  long  in  an  unde- 
veloped stage  cannot  be  explained  away  simply 
by  the  tardiness  of  the  progress  of  arts  in  gen- 
eral. The  chief  cause  must  be  attributed  to  the 
fact  that  the  contemporary  civilisation  was  lack- 
ing in  individualistic  elements.  Unless  there  is  a 
rise  of  the  individualistic  spirit  in  a  certain  meas- 
ure, no  real  progress  in  portraiture  can  be  ex- 
pected. 

In  the  Ashikaga  period,  a  large  number  of 
scroll-paintings  had  been  produced  as  before,  but 
they  were  mostly  inferior  in  quality  to  those  of 
the  preceding  age.  On  the  other  hand,  we  notice 
a  vast  improvement  in  the  portrait-painting  of  this 
period.  It  may  be  due  to  some  extent  to  the  in- 
fluence of  the  Zen  sect,  the  sect  which  prevailed 
among  the  upper  class  of  that  time,  for  its  creed 
is  said  to  be  strongly  individualistic.  Mainly, 
however,  it  must  have  come  from  the  general 
spirit  of  the  age,  which,  though  it  could  not  be 
said  to  have  been  free  from  the  influence  of  the 
same  sect,  was  induced  to  become  individualistic 
more  by  social  and  economical  reasons  than  by 
religious  ones.  By  painters  of  the  schools  of  Tosa 
and  Kano  were  painted  numerous  portraits  of 
eminent  personages,  such  as  the  Shogun,  cour- 
tiers, great  feudatories,  priests,  especially  of  the 
Zen  sect,  literati,  artists,  experts  in  tea-ceremony, 
and  so  forth.  Their  pictures  were  generally 


248  History  of  Japan 

made  after  death  by  order  of  the  near  relatives, 
friends,  vassals  or  disciples  of  the  deceased,  to 
be  a  memorial  of  the  person  whom  they  adored  or 
revered.  Not  a  small  number  of  those  paintings 
are  extant  to  this  day,  showing  vividly  the  charac- 
teristics of  those  illustrious  figures  in  Japanese 
history. 

The  political  anarchy  combined  with  the  indi- 
vidualistic tendency  of  the  age  could  not  fail  to 
lead  to  the  moral  dissolution  of  the  people.  To 
the  same  effect,  too,  the  literature  of  the  time, 
which  was  a  revival  of  that  of  the  Fujiwara  pe- 
riod, contributed.  The  classical  authors  of  Jap- 
anese literature  at  the  height  of  the  Fujiwara  pe- 
riod were  now  perused,  commented  upon,  and 
elucidated  with  devouring  eagerness,  the  most 
adored  among  them  being  Murasaki-Shikibu, 
whose  famous  novel,  Genji-monogatari,  was  re- 
garded mystically  and  held  to  be  almost  divine. 
The  nature  of  this  literature  was  for  the  most  part 
realistic,  or  rather  sentimental,  verging  some- 
times on  sensuality.  It  was,  however,  clad  in  the 
exquisitely  refined  costume  of  beautiful  diction  and 
choice  turns  of  phrase,  borrowed  or  metamor- 
phosed from  the  inexhaustible  stores  of  Chinese 
literature.  As  to  the  revived  form  of  literature 
in  the  Ashikaga  period,  the  difference  between 
it  and  that  of  the  old  time  was  so  remarkable,  that 
it  could  not  be  overlooked.  Vulgarisation  usurp- 
ing the  place  of  refinement,  and  coarse  sensuality 
reigning  rampant  was  the  outcome  of  the  culti- 


End  of  Mediaeval  Japan       249 

vation  of  the  classical  literature.  The  moral  tone 
of  the  stories  and  novels  produced  in  this  de- 
cadent age  unmistakably  reflects  how  low  was  the 
ebb  of  the  sense  of  decency  of  that  period,  fos- 
tered by  the  naturalistic  tendency  manifested  in 
the  Fujiwara  classics. 

These  depict  the  dark  side  of  the  age,  but  in 
order  not  to  be  one-sided  in  my  judgment,  let  me 
tell  also  about  its  bright  side.  The  culture  of  the 
Ashikaga  had  from  the  beginning  a  trend  to  grow 
more  and  more  humanistic  as  it  approached  the 
end  of  the  period.  One  more  aspect  in  the  his- 
tory of  Japanese  painting  proves  it  to  the  full. 
Landscapes  and  still-life  pictures,  which  had  been 
formerly  painted  only  as  the  accessories  of  re- 
ligious images  or  as  the  background  in  the  scroll 
paintings,  before  which  the  main  subjects,  that  is 
to  say,  the  personages  in  stories  were  made  to 
play,  began  now  to  form  by  themselves  each  a 
special  independent  group  of  subjects  for  paint- 
ing. This  shows  that  the  people  of  the  time  had 
already  entered  a  cultural  stage  able  to  enjoy  the 
arts  for  art's  sake.  Many  pictures  of  such  a  kind 
by  the  brush  of  noted  Chinese  masters  were  im- 
ported into  our  country,  and  several  clever  Japan- 
ese artists  also  painted  after  them.  Some  of  our 
artists,  like  Sesshu,  went  over  to  China  to  study 
the  art  of  painting  there.  The  differentiation  of 
the  school  of  Kano  from  the  older  Tosa  was  an- 
other result  of  this  development.  Most  of  these 
pictures  were  executed  in  the  form  of  kakemono, 


250  History  of  Japan 

or  hanging  pictures,  so  called  from  their  being 
hung  in  a  special  niche  of  a  drawing  room  or  a 
study.  Screens,  or  byobu,  mounted  with  pictures, 
became  also  a  fashion.  In  general,  the  furnishing 
of  a  house  was  now  a  matter  of  a  certain  educated 
taste,  and  various  systems  were  devised  and  for- 
mulated by  accomplished  experts. 

The  delicacy  of  the  aesthetic  sense  in  indoor- 
life  was  moreover  enhanced  by  the  laborious  eti- 
quette of  fashionable  tea-parties  held  by  aristo- 
crats and  bourgeois  alike.  The  tea-plant  itself 
is  said  to  have  been  introduced  from  China  into 
our  country  in  the  reign  of  the  Emperor  Saga, 
that  is  to  say,  at  the  beginning  of  the  ninth  cen- 
tury. Its  use,  however,  as  the  daily  beverage  was 
of  a  far  later  date.  Yosai,  the  founder  of  the 
Zen  sect  in  Japan,  wrote  in  the  early  Kamakura 
period  a  commendation  on  tea  as  the  healthiest 
drink  of  all.  Still,  for  a  long  while  after  him,  tea 
seems  to  have  been  used  exclusively  by  Buddhists 
as  a  tonic.  It  was  in  the  Ashikaga  age  that  tea 
came  first  into  general  use  among  the  well-to-do 
classes  of  the  people.  As  the  production  of  it 
was,  however,  not  so  abundant  as  now,  it  was  not 
used  daily  as  at  present,  but  occasionally,  with  an 
etiquette  conducted  with  exquisitely  refined  taste, 
both  hosts  and  guests  rivalling  one  another  in  dis- 
playing their  artistic  acquirements  by  delivering 
extempore  speeches  in  criticism  of  the  various  ar- 
ticles of  art  exhibited,  or  in  amusing  themselves 


End  of  Mediaeval  Japan       251 

with  mystic  dialogues  of  the  Zen  creed,  or  the 
lively  exchange  of  witty  repartees. 

After  all,  the  tendency  of  the  culture  of  the 
later  Ashikaga  period  was  in  the  main  humanis- 
tic. There  was  no  political  authority  so  firmly 
constituted,  nor  were  conventional  morals  of  the 
time  so  rigorous,  as  to  be  able  to  put  an  ef- 
fective check  on  any  liberal  thinker,  nor  to  inter- 
vene in  the  daily  life  of  the  people.  Thought  and 
action  in  Japan  has  never  been  more  free  than 
in  that  age.  That  Christianity  could  find  innum- 
erable converts  from  one  end  of  the  empire  to 
the  other  within  half  a  century  after  its  introduc- 
tion, may  be  accounted  for  by  supposing  that  the 
ground  for  it  had  been  prepared  long  before  by 
this  exceedingly  humanistic  culture.  In  this  re- 
spect we  see  the  dawn  of  modern  Japan  already 
in  the  later  Ashikaga  age.  What  a  striking  simi- 
larity to  the  Italian  renaissance !  Japan  was  now 
in  the  throes  of  travail — the  time  for  a  new  birth 
was  fast  approaching.  Conditions  on  the  whole 
were  favourable.  All  that  was  wanted  for  this 
were  the  moral  regeneration  of  the  people  and 
the  political  reconstruction  of  the  Empire. 


CHAPTER  X 

THE    TRANSITION    FROM    MEDIAEVAL    TO    MODERN 
JAPAN 

ANARCHY  engendered  peace  at  least.  At  the 
end  of  the  Ashikaga  Shogunate  the  minor  terri- 
torial lords,  who  had  sprung  up  out  of  the  im- 
potency  of  the  Shogun,  were  swallowed  up  one 
after  another  by  the  more  powerful  ones.  The 
rights  of  manorial  holders,  that  is  to  say,  of  court- 
nobles,  shrines,  and  temples,  over  estates  legally 
their  own,  though  long  since  fallen  into  a  condi- 
tion of  semi-desuetude,  were  active,  sensitive,  yet 
powerful  enough  in  the  middle  of  the  period  to 
withstand  the  attempted  encroachments  of  those 
territorial  lords,  who  were  de  jure  only  managers 
of  the  estates  entrusted  to  their  care;  but  those 
rights  began  in  course  of  time  to  lose  their  enforc- 
ing power,  and  were  finally  set  at  naught  by  the 
all-powerful  military  magnates.  The  link  be- 
tween the  estates  and  their  proprietors  was  thus 
virtually  cut  off,  and  each  territory,  which  was  in 
truth  an  agglomeration  of  several  estates,  came 
to  stand  as  one  body  under  the  rule  of  a  military 
lord,  without  any  reservation  to  his  right.  In 
other  words,  each  territory  became  a  domain  of 

252 


From  Mediaeval  to  Modern  Japan  253 

a  lord  pure  and  simple,  and  it  may  be  best  ex- 
plained by  imagining  a  quasi-sovereign  state  in 
Europe  formed  by  joining  together  a  certain  num- 
ber of  ecclesiastical  domains,  the  lands  of  which 
were  contiguous.  It  is  true  that  the  size  of  such 
territories  varied,  ranging  from  one  so  big  as 
to  contain  several  provinces  down  to  petty  ones 
comprising  only  a  few  villages;  their  boundaries, 
too,  shifted  from  time  to  time.  Notwithstanding 
this  diversity  in  size  and  the  inconstancy  of  the 
frontier-lines,  these  territories  were  similar  to  one 
another  in  their  main  nature,  no  more  complicated 
by  intricate  manorial  systems.  If,  therefore, 
there  appeared  at  once  some  irrresistable  neces- 
sity for  national  unification  or  some  great  histori- 
cal figure,  whose  ability  was  equal  to  the  task  of 
achieving  the  work,  Japan  could  now  be  made  a 
solid  national  state  far  more  easily  than  at  any 
earlier  period. 

Besides  this  facilitation  of  the  political  unity, 
what  most  contributed  to  the  settling  of  the  gen- 
eral order  was  the  resuscitation  of  the  moral  sense 
of  the  nation.  The  highly  advanced  Chinese  civi- 
lisation introduced  into  our  country  at  a  time  when 
it  was  comparatively  nai've,  had  an  effect  which 
could  not  be  termed  exactly  in  all  respects  whole- 
some. The  morals  of  the  people,  whose  mode 
of  life  was  simplicity  itself,  not  having  yet  tasted 
the  sumptuousness  of  civilised  life,  excelled  those 
of  higher  civilised  nations  in  veracity,  soberness, 
and  courage.  Lacking,  however,  in  the  firm  con- 


254  History  of  Japan 

sciousness  which  must  accompany  any  virtue  of 
a  standard  worthy  of  sincere  admiration,  these 
attributes  of  the  ancient  Japanese,  though  lauda- 
ble in  themselves,  could  have  no  high  intrinsic 
value,  and  were  inadequate  to  stem  the  enervating 
influence  of  the  elegantly  developed  alien  civilisa- 
tion introduced  later  on  into  the  country.  The 
ethical  ties,  which  are  indispensable  at  any  time 
for  maintaining  the  social  order  in  a  healthy  con- 
dition, were  gradually  reduced  to  a  state  of  utter 
dissolution  in  the  later  or  over-refined  stage  of 
the  Fujiwara  period,  especially  among  the  upper 
classes.  With  the  attainment  of  political  power  by 
the  warrior  class  in  the  formation  of  the  Kama- 
kura  Shogunate,  there  shimmered  once  some  hope 
of  the  reawakening  of  the  moral  spirit,  for  fidelity 
and  gratitude,  which  were  the  cardinal  virtues  of 
the  Kamakura  warriors,  were  efficient  factors  in 
refreshing  and  invigorating  a  society  which  had 
once  fallen  into  a  despicable  languor  and  demora- 
lisation. The  ascendency  of  these  bracing  forces, 
however,  was  but  transitory.  This  disappoint- 
ment came  not  only  from  the  shortness  of  the 
duration  of  the  genuine  military  regime  at  Kama- 
kura, but  also  from  another  reason  not  less  prob- 
able. The  admirable  virtues  of  the  warriors 
were  the  natural  outcome  of  the  peculiar  private 
circumstances  created  in  the  fighting  bodies  of  the 
time,  and  were  on  that  account  essentially  domes- 
tic in  their  nature.  As  long  as  these  warriors  re- 
mained, therefore,  mere  professional  fighters  and 


From  Mediaeval  to  Modern  Japan  255 

tools  in  the  hands  of  court  nobles,  the  moral 
ties  binding  leaders  and  followers  as  well  as  the 
esprit  de  corps  among  these  followers  themselves 
had  very  slight  chance  of  coming  into  contact  with 
politics.  In  short,  the  majority  of  these  warriors 
were  not  acquainted  with  public  life  at  all,  so 
that  they  were  at  a  loss  how  to  behave  themselves 
as  public  men  when,  as  the  real  masters  of  the 
country,  they  found  themselves  obliged  to  deal 
with  political  affairs.  Public  affairs  are  gener- 
ally prone  to  induce  men  even  of  high  probity  to 
put  undue  importance  upon  the  attainment  of  end, 
rather  than  to  make  them  scrupulous  about  the 
means  of  arriving  at  that  end;  and  if  the  moral 
sense  of  the  people  is  not  developed  enough  to 
guard  against  this  injurious  infection  of  private 
life  from  the  meddling  with  public  affairs,  then 
their  inborn  and  yet  untried  virtues  may  often 
fail  to  assert  themselves  against  the  influence  of 
the  depravity  which  can  find  its  way  more  easily 
into  public  than  into  private  life.  Such  was  the 
case  with  the  warriors  of  the  Kamakura  age. 
Through  their  ascendency  the  martial  spirit  of  the 
nation,  which  had  languished  somewhat  under  the 
rule  of  the  Fujiwara  nobles,  was  once  more  re- 
vived, but  their  descendants  at  the  end  of  that 
Shogunate  could  not  be  so  brave  and  simple- 
hearted  as  their  forefathers  were.  The  extinction 
of  the  Minamoto  family,  too,  relieved  these  war- 
riors of  their  duty  as  hereditary  liegemen  of  the 
Shogun,  for  henceforth  both  the  Shogun,  who 


256  History  of  Japan 

was  now  of  a  different  family  from  that  of  the 
Minamoto,  and  the  Hojo,  the  real  master  of  the 
Shogunate,  were  to  them  superiors  only  in  offi- 
cial relations.  This  disappearance  of  the  object 
on  which  the  fidelity  of  the  warriors  used  to  con- 
centrate, made  fidelity  itself  an  empty  virtue.  At 
least  among  the  circle  of  warriors  in  the  age  in 
which  fidelity  was  everything  and  all  other  virtues 
were  but  ancillary  to  it,  this  loss  must  have  been 
a  great  drawback  to  the  improvement  of  the 
morality  of  the  nation.  The  demoralisation  of 
the  influential  class  had  thus  set  in  since  the  latter 
part  of  the  Kamakura  age.  No  wonder  that  dur- 
ing the  civil  war  which  ensued  many  of  the  promi- 
nent warriors  changed  sides  very  frequently,  al- 
most without  any  hesitation,  obeying  only  the  dic- 
tates and  suggestions  of  their  private  interests. 
That  this  civil  war,  which  ended  without  any  de- 
cisive battle  being  fought,  could  drag  on  for 
nearly  a  century,  may  be  best  understood  by  tak- 
ing this  recklessness  of  the  participants  into  con- 
sideration. The  inconsistency  in  their  attitude  or 
the  want  of  fidelity  towards  those  to  whom  they 
ought  to  be  faithful  was  not  restricted  to  their 
transactions  in  public  affairs  only,  but  extended 
also  to  the  recesses  of  their  family  life.  Parents 
could  no  more  confide  in  their  own  children,  nor 
husband  in  his  wife,  and  masters  had  always  to 
be  on  guard  against  betrayal  by  their  servants. 
After  the  civil  war  there  were  many  periods  of 
intermittent  peace  in  the  first  half  of  the  Ashi- 


From  Mediaeval  to  Modem  Japan  257 

kaga  regime,  but  that  was  not  a  result  of  the 
firm  and  strong  government  of  the  Shogun.  They 
were  rather  lulls  after  storms,  brought  about  by 
the  weariness  felt  after  a  long  anarchy. 

The  culmination  of  this  deplorable  condition 
of  national  demoralisation  falls  to  the  epoch  of 
the  next  civil  war,  that  is  to  say,  of  the  Ohnin  era. 
It  is  in  this  period  that  we  witness  a  great  de- 
velopment of  the  spy  system  and  of  the  usage  of 
taking  hostages  as  a  security  against  breach  of 
faith.  Even  such  means,  however,  proved  often 
inefficient  to  guard  against  the  unexpected  treach- 
ery of  supposed  intimate  friends,  or  a  sudden  at- 
tack from  the  rear  by  trusted  neighbours.  Deser- 
tion, though  not  recommended  as  a  laudable  ac- 
tion, was  nevertheless  not  considered  a  detestable 
infamy,  especially  when  it  was  carried  out  an- 
terior to  the  pitching  of  the  camps  against  the 
enemy,  and  deserters  or  betrayers  were  generally 
welcomed  and  loaded  with  munificent  rewards  by, 
their  new  masters.  Was  it  possible  that  such  a 
ruthless  state  could  continue  for  long  without  any 
counteraction?  If  any  one  had  once  betrayed  his 
first  master  for  the  sake  of  selfish  interests,  could 
he  claim  after  that  to  be  a  sort  of  person  able 
to  enjoy  the  implicit  confidence  of  his  second  mas- 
ter? Examples  of  repeated  breaches  of  faith 
abound  in  the  history  of  the  time.  It  was  from 
the  general  unreliableness  caused  by  such  habitual 
acts  of  treachery,  that  the  practice  of  giving  quar- 
ter to  deserters  and  facile  surrenderee  began 


258  History  of  Japan 

gradually  to  diminish.  And  the  result  was  that 
the  danger  of  being  killed  after  having  surren- 
dered or  capitulated  became  a  cause  to  induce 
those  warriors,  who  would  otherwise  have  easily 
given  up  their  master's  cause,  to  remain  true  to 
him  to  the  end.  This  is  one  of  the  reasons  why, 
after  so  long  a  domination  of  this  miserable  de- 
moralisation, we  begin  frequently  to  come  upon 
those  beautiful  episodes  which  showed  the  solidar- 
ity of  clans  admirably  maintained  and  the  utter 
loyalty  of  vassals  to  their  lord,  fighting  to  the 
death  under  his  banner.  The  process,  howrever, 
of  ameliorating  the  morals  of  the  nation  should 
not  begin  from  the  relation  of  master  and  servant, 
but  slowly  start  from  within  families.  One  could 
not  refrain  from  feeling  the  imperative  necessity 
of  trustworthy  mutual  dependence  among  mem- 
bers connected  by  ties  of  blood,  amidst  the  dreary 
environs  in  which  no  hearty  confidence  could  be 
put  in  any  one  with  safety.  That  the  Hsiao-king, 
a  Chinese  moral  book  treating  of  the  merits  of 
filial  piety,  was  widely  read  in  educated  circles  of 
the  time,  and  that  several  editions  of  the  same 
book  have  been  published  since  the  middle  of  the 
Ashikaga  period,  show  how  great  a  stress  was 
put  on  the  encouragement  of  domestic  duties. 
With  the  family,  made  a  compact  body,  as  the 
starting  point,  the  reorganisation  of  social  and 
national  morals  was  thus  set  on  foot.  The  growth 
of  the  tendency  of  liegemen  to  share  the  same  fate 
as  their  lord  is  to  be  looked  upon  as  a  kind  of 


From  Mediaeval  to  Modern  Japan  259 

extension  of  this  family  solidarity,  as  it  came  not 
from  the  consideration  of  the  mere  relation  be- 
tween a  master  and  his  servants,  but  rather  from 
that  of  the  hereditary  transmittal  of  such  a  re- 
lation on  both  sides,  just  as  it  was  at  the  beginning 
of  the  Kamakura  Shogunate.  There  was  no 
doubt  therefore  that  the  smaller  the  size  of  the 
territory  of  a  lord,  the  easier  the  consummation 
of  the  process  of  its  compact  consolidation,  which 
was  necessarily  cemented  by  a  close  mutual  at- 
tachment between  the  lord  of  that  territory  and 
his  dependents  within  and  without  his  family. 
Not  only  that.  If  that  territory  was  small  and 
weak,  and  in  constant  danger  of  being  destroyed 
or  annexed  by  powerful  neighbours,  then  the  same 
process  of  consolidation  was  effected  very  swiftly. 
The  territory  in  the  province  of  Mikawa,  which 
was  owned  by  the  family  of  the  Tokugawa,  was 
one  of  many  such  instances.  This  territory  was 
so  small  in  size,  that  it  did  not  cover  more  than 
a  half  of  the  province,  and  moreover  it  was  sur- 
rounded by  the  domains  belonging  to  the  two 
powerful  families  of  Oda  and  Imagawa  on  the 
west  and  east,  so  that  the  small  estate  of  the 
Tokugawa  family  was  constantly  harassed  by 
them,  and  maintained  as  a  protectorate  now  by 
the  one  and  then  by  the  other  of  the  two.  On 
that  account  nowhere  else  was  there  a  stronger 
demand  for  a  close  affinity  between  a  territorial 
lord  and  his  men,  than  in  this  domain  of  the  To- 
kugawa's.  Consequently  we  see  there  not  only 


260  History  of  Japan 

an  early  progress  in  territorial  consolidation,  but 
along  with  it  the  resuscitation  of  an  acute  moral 
sense,  especially  in  the  direction  necessary  and 
compatible  to  the  maintenance  and  development 
of  a  military  state. 

The  reawakening  of  the  high  moral  sense  in 
the  nation  and  the  formation  of  compact  self- 
constituted  territories,  virtually  independent  but 
amply  liable  to  the  influence  of  unifying  forces, 
were  the  phenomena  in  the  latter  half  of  the 
Ashikaga  period.  That  the  country  was  slow  in 
becoming  nationalised  and  unified  must  be  attrib- 
uted to  the  insufficiency  of  that  reawakening  and 
the  insolidity  of  those  quasi-independent  terri- 
tories. The  general  culture  of  the  time,  which 
was  humanistic  in  nature,  was  powerless  for  the 
moment  to  facilitate  this  movement  which  was 
national  and  moral  at  the  same  time.  Humanis- 
tic as  it  was,  it  was  able  to  pervade  the  provinces, 
and  gave  to  Japan  a  uniform  colour  of  culture. 
That  was  already,  indeed,  a  stride  forward  on 
the  way  to  national  unification.  Nay,  it  may  be 
said  that  the  impulse  to  that  very  unification  was 
given  by  that  very  culture.  Generally,  however, 
the  humanistic  culture  of  any  form  has  no  par- 
ticular state  of  things  as  its  practical  goal,  and 
therefore  cannot  necessarily  lead  to  an  improve- 
ment in  the  morals  of  any  particular  nation,  nor 
does  it  always  stimulate  the  desire  for  the  na- 
tional unification  of  a  certain  country.  On  the 
contrary,  it  often  counteracts  these  movements, 


From  Mediaeval  to  Modem  Japan  261 

and  seemingly  contributes  toward  accelerating  the 
demoralisation  and  dismemberment  of  a  nation, 
for  individualism  and  selfishness  get  often  the 
upper  hand  when  such  a  culture  becomes  ascend- 
ant. The  fruit  which  the  Renaissance  of  the  Quat- 
trocento bore  to  Italians  was  just  of  this  sort,  and 
the  direct  influence  which  the  humanistic  culture 
of  the  later  Ashikaga  produced  on  Japan  was 
not  very  much  different  from  that.  The  culture, 
which  had  spread  widely  all  over  Japan,  rather 
tended  to  loosen  moral  ties,  and  at  least  dimin- 
ished the  social  stability.  Persons,  of  a  character 
morally  most  depraved,  such  as  traitors,  mur- 
derers, and  so  forth,  were  not  infrequently  men 
of  high  culture.  Most  of  the  rebellious  servants 
of  the  Ashikaga  Shogun  were  said  to  have  been 
highly-accomplished  literati.  Some  of  them  were 
addicted  to  the  perusal  of  the  sensational  novels 
produced  in  the  golden  age  of  classical  literature 
in  Japan,  such  as  the  he-  and  the  Genji-monoga- 
tarlj  and  others  were  composers  of  short  poems 
fashionable  in  those  days,  rejoicing  at  their  own 
display  of  flighty  wit,  while  not  a  few  of  them 
were  liberal  patronisers  of  the  contemporary  art, 
especially  of  painting.  What  a  striking  parallel- 
ism to  those  Popes  and  their  nephews,  in  the  time 
of  the  Renaissance,  whose  patronising  of  arts  is 
as  renowned  as  their  atrocious  vices ! 

If  the  culture  inborn  or  borrowed  from  China 
was  unable  to  save  the  country  from  a  moral  and 
political  crisis,  what  was  the  fruit  borne  by  the 


262  History  of  Japan 

seeds  of  the  new  exotic  culture,  that  is  to  say,  of 
Christianity,  sown  just  at  this  juncture?  I  will 
not  dilate  here  on  the  relation  between  religion 
and  morality  in  general.  Suffice  it  to  say  that  re- 
ligious people  are  not  always  virtuous.  Bigots 
are  generally  men  of  perverse  character,  and 
mostly  vicious.  This  is  a  truism.  It  has  been 
so  with  Buddhism  and  many  other  religions.  Why 
should  it  be  otherwise  only  in  the  case  of  Chris- 
tianity? As  regards  the  general  culture  of  our 
country,  the  introduction  of  Christianity  is  a  very 
important  historical  fact,  the  influence  of  which 
can  by  no  means  be  overlooked.  Though  the 
secular  culture  which  was  introduced  into  Japan 
as  the  accessory  of  the  Christian  propaganda  was 
of  a  very  limited  nature,  and  though  the  free  ac- 
ceptance of  it  was  cut  short  soon  after  its  circula- 
tion, yet  this  new  element  of  civilisation  brought 
over  by  the  missionaries  was  much  more  than  a 
drop  in  the  ocean.  However  difficult  it  be  to  per- 
ceive the  traces  of  the  Western  culture  in  the 
spirit  of  the  age  which  was  to  follow,  it  cannot  be 
denied  that  it  left,  after  all,  some  indelible  mark 
on  our  national  history.  That  it  had  spread  with- 
in a  few  decades  all  over  the  contemporary  Japan, 
from  the  extreme  south  to  the  furthest  north, 
should  also  not  be  left  out  of  sight.  Thenceforth 
the  Fables  of  JEsop  have  not  ceased  to  be  told 
in  the  lamplit  hours  in  the  nurseries  of  Japan. 
We  see  Japan,  after  the  first  introduction  of 
Christianity,  painted  in  a  somewhat  different 


From  Mediaeval  to  Modern  Japan  263 

colour,  though  the  difference  of  tincture  may  be 
said  to  be  extremely  slight.  The  knowledge  at 
least  that  there  were  outside  of  China,  many 
people  in  the  far  West,  civilised  enough  to  teach 
us  in  several  branches  of  science  and  art,  opened 
the  eyes  of  the  island  nation  to  a  wider  field  of 
vision,  and  began  to  alter  the  views  which  we  had 
entertained  about  things  Chinese.  Previously,  for 
anything  to  become  authoritative,  it  had  been 
enough  if  the  Chinese  origin  of  that  thing  could 
be  assured.  The  overshadowing  influence  which 
China  had  wielded  over  Japan  at  the  time  of  the 
Fujiwara  regime  was  revived  in  different  form  in 
the  middle  Ashikaga  period,  the  former  being 
China  of  the  T'ang,  while  the  latter  that  of  the 
Sung,  Yuan,  and  Ming.  In  short,  China  had  long 
continued  as  a  too  brilliant  guiding  star  to  the 
Japanese  mind,  Korea,  by  the  way,  having  been 
regarded  only  as  one  of  the  intermediaries  be- 
tween the  "flowery"  Empire  and  our  country. 
It  would  be,  of  course,  a  hasty  judgment  to  con- 
clude that  the  introduction  of  Christianity  in- 
stantly let  the  scales  fall  from  the  eyes  of  the 
Japanese  as  regards  China,  and  aroused  thereby 
a  fervent  national  enthusiasm  of  the  people,  but 
at  least  it  was  a  strong  impetus  to  the  awakening 
of  the  national  consciousness,  and  led  indirectly  to 
the  political  unification  of  the  country.  In  this 
respect  the  introduction  of  the  new  religion  had  a 
salutary  effect  on  our  history. 

As  to  the  betterment  of  the  individual  morals 


264  History  of  Japan 

of  the  contemporary  Japanese,  however,  the  in- 
fluence of  Christianity  cannot  be  said  to  have  been 
wholesome  in  all  ways.  It  probably  did  as  much 
mischief  as  good  during  its  brief  prosperity.  Any 
cult,  which  may  be  styled  a  universal  religion, 
contains  a  strong  tincture  of  individualism  in  its 
doctrines,  and  any  creed  of  which  individualism 
is  a  main  factor  often  easily  tends  to  encourage, 
against  its  original  purpose,  the  pursuit  of  selfish 
objects.  In  this  respect  even  Christianity  can  of- 
fer no  exception.  What,  then,  could  it  preach, 
at  the  end  of  the  Ashikaga  regime,  to  the  Japan- 
ese who  were  already  individualistic  enough  with- 
out the  new  teaching  of  the  western  religion,  be- 
sides the  intensifying  of  that  individualism  to 
make  it  still  more  strong  and  prevalent?  More- 
over, the  very  moral  doctrine  of  the  Christianity 
introduced  by  Francis  Xavier  and  his  successors 
was  nothing  but  the  moral  of  the  Jesuits  of  the 
sixteenth  century,  who  maintained  the  unscrupu- 
lous teaching  that  the  end  justified  the  means, 
the  moral  principle  which  has  been  universally  ad- 
judged in  Europe  to  be  a  very  dangerous  and 
obnoxious  doctrine.  Could  it  have  been  other- 
wise only  in  our  country  as  an  exceptional  case? 
But  if  these  missionaries  had  all  been  men  of  truly 
noble  and  upright  character,  they  should  have 
been  able  perhaps  to  raise  the  standard  of  our 
national  morals  by  personal  contact  with  the 
Japanese,  notwithstanding  the  moral  tenets  of 
their  religion.  Unfortunately,  however,  most  of 


From  Mediaeval  to  Modern  Japan  265 

them  were  of  debased  character,  with  the  excep- 
tion of  St.  Francis  Xavier  and  a  few  others.  We 
need  not  doubt  the  ardent  desire  of  these  mission- 
aries to  save  the  "souls"  of  the  Japanese,  and  thus 
to  recover  in  the  East  what  they  had  lost  in  the 
West.  But  by  whatever  motive  their  pious  under- 
takings may  have  been  prompted,  their  religious 
enthusiasm  and  their  dauntless  courage  do  not 
confute  the  charge  of  dishonesty.  That  the 
majority  of  them  were  grossest  liars  is  evident 
from  their  reports  addressed  to  their  superiors  in 
Europe,  in  which  the  numbers  of  converts  and 
martyrs  in  this  country  were  misrepresented  and 
ridiculously  exaggerated,  in  order  bombastically 
to  manifest  their  undue  merits,  exaggeration 
which  could  not  be  attributed  to  a  lack  of  precise 
knowledge  about  those  matters.  What  could  we 
expect  from  men  of  such  knavish  characters  as 
regards  the  moral  regeneration  of  the  contem- 
porary Japanese? 

As  these  missionaries,  however,  were  at  least 
cunning,  if  not  intelligent  in  a  good  sense,  it  would 
not  have  been  impossible  for  them  to  achieve 
something  in  the  domain  of  the  moral  education 
of  the  nation,  if  they  could  only  have  understood 
the  real  state  of  Japan  of  that  time.  On  the 
contrary,  their  comprehension  of  our  country  and 
of  our  forefathers  was  far  wide  of  the  mark. 
Most  of  them  had  expected  to  find  in  Japan  an 
El  Dorado  inhabited  by  primitive  folks  of  a  very 
low  grade  of  intelligence,  where  they  could  play 


266  History  of  Japan 

their  parts  gloriously  as  missionaries  by  preach- 
ing the  Gospel  in  the  wilderness.  They  had  not 
dreamt  that  the  culture  possessed  by  the  Japanese 
of  that  time,  though  for  the  most  part  borrowed 
from  China,  was  superior  to  that  of  some  still  un- 
civilised parts  of  Europe,  for  the  difference  in  the 
form  of  civilisation  deceived  them  in  their  judg- 
ment of  the  value  of  Eastern  culture.  When  they 
set  their  feet  on  Japanese  soil,  therefore,  they 
soon  discovered  that  they  had  been  grossly  mis- 
taken, and  then  running  to  the  opposite  extreme 
they  fell  into  the  error  of  overestimation.  Yet 
they  did  not  stop  at  this.  This  first  misconception 
on  the  part  of  the  missionaries  about  Japan  left 
in  them  an  ineradicable  prejudice.  They  became 
very  niggards  in  seeing  things  Japanese  in  an  im- 
partial light,  and  constituted  themselves  con- 
sciously or  unconsciously  fault-finders  of  the 
people,  and  unfortunately  the  Japan  of  that  time 
furnished  them  with  much  material  to  corroborate 
their  low  opinion.  The  result  was  that  while  on 
the  one  hand  the  Japanese  were  praised  far  above 
their  real  value,  they  were  stigmatised  equally 
far  below  their  real  merits.  Regrettable  as  it  was 
for  Japan  to  have  received  such  reprehensible 
people  as  pioneers  of  Western  civilisation,  it  was 
also  pitiable  that  Christianity,  which  had  been  fer- 
vently embraced  by  a  large  number  of  Japanese, 
was  once  rooted  out  chiefly  on  account  of  the  in- 
credible folly  of  these  missionaries,  who  fer- 
mented trouble  and  embroiled  themselves  in  num- 


From  Mediaeval  to  Modem  Japan  267 

berless  intrigues,  which  were  quite  useless  and 
unnecessary  as  regards  the  cause  of  Christianity, 
It  would,  in  good  sooth,  have  been  absurd  to  hope 
to  have  the  morality  of  the  people  improved  by 
the  personal  influence  of  such  reckless  adventur- 
ers. 

Japan  was  ready  to  be  transformed  into  a  solid 
national  state,  and  at  the  same  time  to  emerge 
from  a  chaotic  medieval  condition  to  enter  the 
modern  status.  The  cultural  milieu,  however, 
though  it  might  have  been  ripe  for  change,  must 
have  found  it  difficult  to  get  transformed  by  it- 
self, and  wanted  an  infusion  of  some  new  element 
to  create  an  opportunity  for  the  change.  A  new 
element  did  come  in,  but  it  proved  to  be  unable  to 
effect  any  wholesome  alteration,  so  that  in  order 
to  create  that  opportunity  the  only  possible  and 
promising  way  was  to  resort  first  to  the  political 
unification  of  the  country,  and  thus  to  start  from 
the  political  and  so  to  reach  social  and  individual 
regeneration.  And  for  that  political  unification 
the  right  man  was  not  long  wanting.  We  find  him 
first  in  Nobunaga  Oda,  then  in  Hideyoshi  Toyo- 
tomi,  and  lastly  in  lyeyasu  Tokugawa. 

The  first  task  was  naturally  to  break  down  the 
authority  of  numerous  traditions  and  conventions 
which  had  kept  the  nation  in  fetters  for  a  long 
time.  This  task  was  an  appropriate  one  for  such 
a  hero  as  Nobunaga,  who  was  imperious  and  in- 
trepid enough  to  brave  every  difficulty  coming  in 
his  way.  He  was  born  in  a  family  which  had 


., 


268  History  of  Japan    \ 

been  of  the  following  of  the  house  of  Shiba,  one 
of  the  branches  of  the  Ashikaga,  and  had  con- 
tinued as  the  hereditary  administrator  of  Owari, 
a  province  which  formed  part  of  the  domain  of  its 
suzerain  lord.  When  the  power  of  the  house  of 
Shiba  decayed,  the  Oda  family  asserted  its  virtual 
independence  in  the  very  province  in  which  it 
had  been  the  vicegerent  of  its  lord,  and  it  was 
after  this  assertion  of  independence  that  our  hero 
was  born.  Strictly  speaking,  therefore,  his  right 
as  a  territorial  lord  was  founded  on  an  act  of 
usurpation,  that  is  to  say,  Nobunaga's  claim  as 
the  owner  of  the  province  had  no  footing  in  the 
old  system  of  the  Ashikaga,  so  that  he  was  des- 
tined by  his  birth  to  become  a  creator  of  the  new 
age,  and  not  the  upholder  of  the  ancient  regime. 
The  province  over  which  he  held  sway  has  been 
called  one  of  the  richest  provinces  in  Japan,  and 
was  not  far  from  Kyoto,  which  was,  as  often 
stated  before,  still  by  far  the  most  influential 
among  the  political  and  cultural  centres  of  the 
empire.  He  and  his  vassals,  therefore,  had  more 
opportunities  than  most  of  the  territorial  lords 
and  their  vassals  living  in  remote  provinces,  of 
getting  sundry  knowledge  useful  to  make  his  ter- 
ritory greater  and  stronger.  In  the  year  1560 
he  defeated  and  killed  his  powerful  enemy  on  the 
east,  Yoshimoto  Imagawa,  the  lord  of  the  two 
provinces,  Totomi  and  Suruga.  This  was  his  first 
acquisition  of  new  territory.  Four  years  after, 
the  province  of  Mino,  lying  to  the  north  of  Owari, 


From  Mediaeval  to  Modern  Japan  269 

came  into  his  possession.  In  1568  he  marched  his 
army  into  Kyoto  to  avenge  the  death  of  the 
Shogun  Yoshiteru,  and  installed  his  brother,  who 
was  the  last  of  the  Ashikaga  line,  as  the  new 
Shogun.  Then  one  territory  after  another  was 
added  to  his  dominion,  so  that  the  Shogun  was 
at  last  eclipsed  in  power  and  influence  by  Oda, 
without  ever  having  renounced  his  hereditary 
rights.  Nobunaga's  dominion  reached  from  the 
Sea  of  Japan  to  the  Pacific  shore,  when  he  met 
at  the  height  of  his  career  of  conquest  a  premature 
death  by  the  hand  of  a  traitor. 

It  is  not,  however,  on  account  of  the  magnitude 
of  the  territories  which  he  annexed,  that  Nobu- 
naga  figures  in  the  history  of  Japan,  for  the  land 
conquered  by  dint  of  his  arms  did  not  cover  more 
than  one-third  of  the  island  of  Honto.  His  real 
historical  importance  lies  not  there,  but  in  that 
he  destroyed  the  old  Japan  and  made  himself  the 
harbinger  of  the  new  age,  though  the  honour 
of  being  creator  of  modern  Japan  must  be  as- 
signed rather  to  Hideyoshi,  his  successor.  Since 
the  beginning  of  our  history,  the  Japanese  have 
always  been  very  reluctant,  in  the  cultural  respect, 
to  give  up  what  they  have  possessed  from  the  first, 
while  they  have  been  very  eager  and  keen  to  take 
in  the  new  exotic  elements  which  seemed  agree- 
able or  useful  to  them.  In  other  words,  the 
Japanese  have  been  simultaneously  conservative 
and  progressive,  and  immoderately  so  in  both 
ways.  The  result  of  such  a  conservation  and  as- 


270  History  of  Japan 

similation  operating  at  the  same  time  was  that  the 
country  has  gradually  become  a  depository  of  a 
huge  mass  of  things  Japanese  and  Chinese,  no 
matter  whether  they  were  desirable  or  not.  If 
any  extotic  matter  or  custom  once  found  its  way 
into  this  country,  it  was  preserved  with  tender 
care  and  never-relaxing  tenacity,  as  if  it  were  some 
treasure  found  or  made  at  home  and  would  prove 
a  credit  to  our  country.  In  this  way  we  could 
save  from  destruction  and  demolition  a  great 
many  historical  remains,  material  as  well  as  spirit- 
ual, not  only  of  Japanese  but  also  of  Chinese  ori- 
gins. There  may  still  be  found  in  our  country 
many  things,  the  histories  of  which  show  that  they 
had  once  their  beginnings  in  China  indeed,  but 
the  traces  of  their  origins  have  long  been  entirely 
lost  there.  Needless  to  say  that  the  religious  rites 
and  other  traditions  of  our  forefathers  in  re- 
motest antiquity  have  been  carefully  handed  down 
to  us.  This  assiduity  for  preserving  on  the  part 
of  the  Japanese  can  best  be  realised  by  the  ex- 
istence to  this  day  of  very  old  wooden  buildings, 
some  of  which,  in  their  dates  of  erection,  go  back 
to  more  than  twelve  hundred  years  ago.  Besides 
this  conservative  propensity  of  the  nation,  the 
history  of  our  country  has  also  been  very  favour- 
able to  the  effort  of  preserving.  We  have  had 
no  chronic  change  of  dynasties  as  in  China,  nor 
have  we  experienced  any  violent  revolution,  shak- 
ing the  whole  structure  of  the  country,  as  the 
French  people  had.  Though  our  history  has  not 


From  Mediaeval  to  Modern  Japan  271 

lacked  in  civil  wars  and  political  convulsions, 
their  destructive  force  has  been  comparatively 
feeble,  and  one  Imperial  house  has  continued  to 
reign  here  from  the  mythic  Age  of  the  Gods ! 
With  this  permanent  sovereign  family  as  the  point 
d'appui,  it  has  been  easier  in  Japan  than  in  any 
other  country  to  preserve  things  historic.  Things 
thus  preserved,  however,  have  not  all  been  worthy 
of  such  care.  As  we  have  been  obliged  to  march 
constantly  with  hurried  steps  in  our  course  of 
civilisation,  little  time  has  been  left  to  us  to  pause 
and  discriminate  what  was  good  for  preservation 
from  what  was  not.  We  have  betaken  ourselves 
occasionally  to  the  process  of  rumination,  but  it 
did  not  render  us  much  assistance.  Not  only  rub- 
bish has  not  been  rejected,  as  it  should  have 
been,  but  the  things  which  proved  of  good  service 
at  one  time  and  subsequently  wore  out,  have  been 
hoarded  over-numerously.  Think  of  this  im- 
mense quantity  'of  the  slag,  the  detritus,  of  the 
civilisations  of  various  countries  in  various  ages 
all  dumped  into  the  limited  area  of  our  small 
empire!  No  people,  however  vigorous  and  pro- 
gressive they  may  have  been,  would  have  been 
able  to  go  on  briskly  with  such  a  heavy  burden  on 
their  backs.  The  worst  evils  were  to  be  recog- 
nised in  the  sphere  of  religious  belief  and  in  the 
transactions  of  daily  official  business.  Red  tape, 
home-made  and  that  of  China  of  all  dynasties, 
taken  in  haphazard  and  fastened  together, 
formed  the  guiding-lines  of  the  so-called  uadmin- 


272  History  of  Japan 

istrative  business"  in  the  time  of  the  court-nobles' 
regime.  The  prestige  of  these  conventionalities 
was  so  powerful  that  even  after  the  installation 
of  the  Shogunate,  that  is  to  say,  after  the  estab- 
lishment of  the  government  which  really  meant  to 
govern,  the  administration,  promising  to  be  far 
more  effective  than  that  of  the  Fujiwara's,  had 
to  be  varnished  with  this  conventionalism.  Kiyo- 
mori,  the  first  of  the  warriors  to  become  the  po- 
litical head  of  the  country,  failed,  because  he  was 
ignorant  of  this  red-tapism.  The  Shogunate  ini- 
ated  by  Yoritomo  tried  at  first  to  keep  itself  aloof 
from  this  influence,  but  could  succeed  only  for  a 
short  duration.  The  second  Shogunate,  the  Ashi- 
kaga,  had  been  overrun  almost  from  its  inception 
by  the  red  tape  of  the  courtiers'  regime,  as  well 
as  by  the  routine  newly  started  in  Kamakura.  The 
humanistic  culture,  which  glimmered  during  the 
latter  part  of  this  Shogunate,  was  by  its  nature 
able  to  find  its  place  only  where  conventionalism 
did  not  reign,  but  it  soon  began  to  give  way  and  be 
conventionalised  also.  Until  this  red-tapism  was 
destroyed,  there  could  have  been  no  possibility  of 
the  modernisation  of  Japan. 

Superstitions  of  all  sorts,  when  fixed  in  their 
forms  and  launched  on  the  stream  of  time  to  float 
down  to  posterity  with  authority  undiminised  by 
age,  make  the  worst  kind  of  convention.  We  had 
a  great  mass  of  conventions  of  this  type  in  our 
country.  Various  superstitions,  from  the  primi- 
tive forms  of  worship,  such  as  fetichism,  totem- 


From  Mediaeval  to  Modern  Japan  273 

ism,  and  so  forth,  to  the  highest  forms  of  idolatry, 
survived  notwithstanding  the  introduction  of  Bud- 
dhism. Buddhism,  too,  has  produced  various  sects 
which  were  rather  to  be  called  coarse  superstitions. 
Taoism  was  also  introduced  together  with  the 
general  Chinese  culture.  Not  to  mention  that 
Shintoism,  which  was  by  its  original  nature  hardly 
to  be  called  a  religion,  but  only  a  system  or  body 
of  rites  inseparable  from  the  history  of  our 
country,  became  blended  with  the  Buddhist  ele- 
ments and  was  preached  as  a  religion  of  a  hybrid 
character.  Thus  a  concourse  of  different  super- 
stitions of  all  ages  had  their  common  field  of 
action  in  the  spirit  of  the  people,  so  that  it  has 
became  exceedingly  difficult  to  tell  exactly  to  what 
kind  of  faith  this  or  that  Japanese  belonged;  in 
other  words,  one  was  divided  against  one's  self. 
To  put  it  in  the  best  light,  religiously  the  Japanese 
were  divided  into  a  large  number  of  different  re- 
ligious groups.  Religion  is  generally  spoken  of 
in  Europe  as  one  of  the  characteristics  of  a  na- 
tion. If  it  is  insufficient  to  serve  as  an  associating 
link  of  a  nation,  at  least  the  difference  in  religious 
belief  can  draw  a  line  of  marked  distinction  be- 
tween different  nations,  and  thus  the  embracing 
of  the  same  religion  becomes  indirectly  a  strong 
uniting  force  in  a  nation.  Such  a  co-existence  of 
heterogeneous  forms  of  religious  beliefs  painted 
the  confessional  map  of  Japan  in  too  many  varie- 
gated colours,  a  condition  which  was  directly  op- 
posed to  the  process  of  national  unification,  of 


274  History  of  Japan 

which  our  country  had  been  placed  in  urgent  need 
for  a  very  long  time.  In  short,  it  was  hard  for 
us  to  expect  from  the  religious  side  anything  help- 
ful in  our  national  affairs. 

Moreover,  the  religious  spirit  of  the  nation 
reached  its  climax  in  this  later  Ashikaga  period. 
Except  in  the  age  of  the  introduction  of  Bud- 
dhism and  the  beginning  of  the  Kamakura  era, 
enthusiasm  for  salvation  has  never,  in  all  the 
course  of  Japanese  history,  been  stronger  than  in 
this  period.  We  witness  now  several  religious 
corporations,  the  most  remarkable  of  which  were 
those  formed  by  two  violent  and  influential  sects 
of  Japanese  Buddhism,  Jodo-shinshu  or  Ikko-shu 
and  Nichiren-shu  or  Hokke-shu.  The  followers 
of  the  latter,  though  said  to  be  the  most  aggres- 
sive sectarian's  in  our  country,  were  not  so  numer- 
ous as  the  former,  and  were  put  under  control 
by  Nobunaga  with  no  great  difficulty.  The  for- 
mer, however,  was  by  far  the  mightier,  consti- 
tuting an  exclusive  society  by  itself,  and  its  ad- 
herents spread  especially  over  the  provinces  of 
central  Japan,  that  is  to  say,  wherever  the  arms 
of  Nobunaga  were  triumphant.  It  presented 
therefore  a  great  hindrance  to  the  uniform  ad- 
ministration of  his  domains. 

Other  Buddhist  bodies,  which  had  been  not  less 
formidable,  not  because  their  creed  had  numerous 
fervent  adherents,  but  because  they  had  an  in- 
visible historical  prestige  originating  in  very  old 
times,  were  the  monks  of  the  temples  and  monas- 


From  Mediaeval  to  Modern  Japan  275 

teries  on  Mount  Hiyei,  belonging  to  the  Tendai 
sect,  and  of  those  clustered  on  Mount  Koya,  of 
the  Shingon  sect.  These  two  sects  had  long 
ceased  active  propaganda,  but  the  temples  had 
been  revered  by  the  Imperial  house,  and  none  had 
ever  dared  to  put  a  check  upon  the  arrogance  of 
the  priests  and  monks  residing  in  them.  As  they 
had  received  rich  donations  in  land  from  the 
court  and  from  devotees,  they  had  been  able  to 
live  a  luxurious  life,  and  very  few  of  them  gave 
themselves  up  to  religious  works.  Most  of  them 
behaved  as  if  they  were  soldiers  by  profession, 
and  were  always  ready  to  fight,  not  only  in  defence 
of  the  interests  of  the  corporations  to  which  they 
belonged,  but  also  as  auxiliaries  of  neighbouring 
territorial  lords,  when  their  aid  was  called  for. 
Such  had  been  the  practice  since  the  end  of  Fuji- 
wara  regime.  The  more  their  soldierly  character 
predominated,  the  more  their  religious  colouring 
decreased,  and  in  the  period  of  which  I  am  speak- 
ing now,  they  were  rather  territorial  powers  than 
religious  bodies.  If  we  seek  for  their  counterpart 
in  the  history  of  Europe,  the  republic  founded  by 
order  of  the  Teutonic  Knights  in  Prussia  would 
fairly  correspond  to  them,  rather  than  ordinary 
bishoprics  or  archbishoprics.  For  the  unification, 
therefore,  they  were  also  obstacles  which  could 
not  be  suffered  to  remain  as  they  had  been. 

In  order  to  achieve  the  national  unification  and 
to  effect  the  modernisation  of  the  country,  it  was 
necessary  to  dispense  with  all  the  red  tape,  the 


276  History  of  Japan 

time-honoured  superstitions  and  all  other  encum- 
brances lying  in  the  way.  It  was  not,  however, 
an  easy  task  to  do  away  with  all  these  things,  for 
they  had  been  held  sacrosanct,  so  that  to  set  them 
at  defiance  was  but  to  brave  the  public  opinion  of 
the  time.  And  none  had  been  courageous  enough 
to  raise  his  hand  against  them,  until  Nobunaga 
decided  to  rid  himself  of  all  these  feeble  but 
tenacious  shackles. 

In  the  year  1571  Nobunaga  attacked  Mount 
Hiyei,  for  the  turbulent  shavelings  of  the  moun- 
tain had  sided  with  his  enemies  in  the  war  of 
the  preceding  year,  and  burned  down  the  Temple 
Yenryakuji  to  the  ground.  The  emblem  of  the 
glory  of  Buddhism  in  Japan,  which  had  stood  for 
more  than  seven  centuries,  was  thus  turned  to 
ashes.  The  next  blow  was  struck  at  the  recal- 
citrant priests  of  the  temple  of  Negoro,  belonging 
to  the  same  sect  as  Koya  and  situated  near  it. 
As  for  the  Ikko-sectarians  with  the  Hongwanji 
as  centre,  the  arms  of  Nobunaga  were  not  so  suc- 
cessful against  them  as  against  the  other  two 
temples,  so  that  in  the  end  he  was  compelled  to 
conclude  an  armistice  with  them,  but  he  was  able 
in  great  measure  to  curtail  their  overbearing 
power.  Of  all  these  feats  of  arms,  the  burning 
of  the  temples  on  Mount  Hiyei  most  dumb- 
founded Nobunaga's  contemporaries,  for  the  hal- 
lowed institution,  held  in  the  highest  esteem  rival- 
ling even  the  prestige  of  the  Imperial  family,  was 
thus  prostrated  in  the  dust,  unable  to  rise  up  again 


From  Mediaeval  to  Modern  Japan  277 

to  its  former  grandeur.  It  is  much  lamented  by 
later  historians  that  in  the  conflagration  of  the 
temple  an  immense  number  of  invaluable  docu- 
ments, chronicles  and  other  kinds  of  historical 
records  was  swept  away  forever,  and  they  calum- 
niated our  hero  on  this  account  rather  severely. 
It  is  true  that  if  those  materials  had  existed  to 
this  day,  the  history  of  our  country  would  have 
been  much  more  lucid  and  easy  to  comprehend 
than  it  is  now,  and  if  Nobunaga  could  have  saved 
those  papers  first,  and  then  burnt  the  temple,  he 
would  have  acted  far  more  wisely  than  he  did, 
and  have  earned  less  censure  from  posterity.  But 
history  is  not  made  for  the  sake  of  historians,  and 
we  need  not  much  lament  about  losses  which  there 
was  little  possibility  of  avoiding.  A  nation  ought 
to  feel  more  grateful  to  a  great  man  for  giving 
her  a  promising  future,  than  for  preserving 
merely  some  souvenirs  of  the  past.  The  bell  an- 
nouncing the  dawn  of  modern  Japan  was  rung 
by  nobody  but  Nobunaga  himself  by  this  demoli- 
tion of  a  decrepit  institution. 

It  was  not  only  those  proud  priests  that  defied 
Nobunaga  and  thereby  suffered  a  heavy  calamity, 
but  the  flourishing  city  of  Sakai  met  the  same  fate. 
As  the  city  had  been  accustomed  to  despise  the 
military  force  of  the  condottieri,  who  abounded 
in  the  provinces  neighbouring  Kyoto  and  were 
easily  to  be  bribed  by  money  to  change  sides,  it 
misunderstood  the  new  rising  power  of  Nobu- 
naga, and  dared  to  defy  him.  The  insolence  of 


278  History  of  Japan 

the  citizens  of  this  wealthy  town  irritated  Nobu- 
naga  and  was  punished  by  him  severely.  The 
defence  works  of  the  city  were  razed  to  the 
ground,  and  the  city  was  placed  under  the  control 
of  a  mayor  appointed  by  him.  The  only  city  in 
Japan  which  promised  to  grow  an  autonomous 
political  body  thus  succumbed  to  the  new  unifying 
force. 

Nobunaga  was  born,  however,  not  to  be  a  mere 
insensate  destroyer  of  ancient  Japan.  He  seems 
also  to  have  been  gifted  with  the  ability  of  recon- 
struction, an  ability  which  was  not  meagre  in  him 
at  all.  That  his  special  attention  was  directed  to 
the  improvement  of  the  means  of  communication 
shows  that  he  considered  the  work  of  organisa- 
tion and  consolidation  to  be  as  important  as  gain- 
ing a  victory.  The  countenance  which  he  gave 
to  the  Christian  missionaries  might  have  been  the 
result  of  his  repugnance  at  the  degradation  or  in- 
tractability of  the  Buddhists  in  Japan.  Could  it 
not  be  imagined,  however,  that  he  was  prone,  in 
religious  affairs  as  well  as  in  other  things,  to  seek 
the  yet  untried  means  thoroughly  to  renovate 
Japan?  It  is  much  to  be  regretted  that  he  did 
not  live  long  enough  to  see  his  aims  attained. 
When  he  died,  his  destructive  task  had  not 
reached  its  end,  and  his  constructive  work  had 
barely  begun.  It  was  he,  however,  who  indicated 
that  Japan  was  a  country  which  could  be  truly 
unified,  and  that  what  had  come  to  be  preserved 
and  revered  blindly  should  not  all  necessarily  be 


From  Mediaeval  to  Modern  Japan  279 

so;  and  the  grand  task  of  building  up  the  new 
Japan,  initiated  by  him,  was  transferred  to  his 
successor,  Hideyoshi. 

It  was  in  1582  that  Nobunaga  died  in  Kyoto, 
and  in  the  quarrel  which  ensued  after  his  death 
among  his  Diadochi,  Hideyoshi  remained  as  the 
final  successor.  The  year  after,  Osaka  was  chosen 
as  the  place  of  his  residence.  He  was  of  very  low 
origin,  so  that  he  had  even  less  footing  in  the  con- 
ventional old  regime  than  his  master  Nobunaga, 
and  therefore  was  more  fitted  to  become  the  crea- 
tor of  the  new  Japan.  He  continued  the  course 
of  conquest  begun  by  Nobunaga,  and  annexed  the 
whole  of  historic  Japan  within  eight  years  from 
his  accession  to  the  political  power.  The  most 
noteworthy  item  in  his  internal  administration  was 
the  land  survey  which  he  ordered  to  be  under- 
taken parallel  to  the  progress  of  his  arms.  The 
great  estates  of  Japan  were  one  after  another 
subjected  to  a  uniform  measurement,  and  thus 
was  fashioned  the  standard  of  new  taxation.  This 
land-survey  began  in  1590  and  continued  till  the 
death  of  Hideyoshi.  The  proportion  of  the  tax 
levied  to  the  area  of  the  taxable  land  must  still 
have  varied  in  different  localities,  but  the  mode  of 
taxation  was  now  simplified  thereby  to  a  great 
extent,  for  the  old  systems,  each  of  which  was 
peculiar  to  an  individual  estate,  were  henceforth 
mostly  abrogated.  The  manorial  system  of  old 
Japan  was  entirely  swept  away. 

The  unity  of  the  nation  under  Hideyoshi,  that 


280  History  of  Japan 

is  to  say,  Japan  at  the  disposal  of  a  single  person, 
an  illuminated  despot,  might  have  been  really  the 
result  of  the  long  process  of  unification  gradually 
accentuated,  but  it  may  also  be  considered  as  one 
of  the  causes  which  brought  about  a  still  stronger 
national  consciousness.  The  expulsion  of  the  for- 
eign missionaries  and  the  prohibition  of  the  Chris- 
tian propaganda  did  not  constitute  a  religious  per- 
secution in  its  strict  sense.  That  Hideyoshi  was 
no  enthusiastic  Buddhist  should  be  accepted  as  a 
negative  proof  of  it.  Most  probably  he  had  no 
religious  aversion  against  Christianity,  but  the  in- 
termeddling of  those  missionaries  in  the  politics 
of  our  country  infuriated  him,  for  the  demand  for 
the  solid  unfication  of  the  nation,  embodied  in 
him,  was  against  such  an  encroachment.  The  per- 
secution, which  crowned  many  adventurers  with 
the  honour  of  martyrdom,  is  to  be  imputed  to  the 
lack  of  prudence  on  the  part  of  those  missionaries. 
As  to  the  motive  of  the  Korean  invasion  under- 
taken by  Hideyoshi,  various  interpretations  have 
been  put  forth  by  various  historians.  Some  ex- 
plain it  as  mere  love  of  adventure  and  fame. 
Others  attribute  it  to  the  necessity  of  keeping  mal- 
content warriors  engaged  abroad,  in  order  to  keep 
the  country  pacific.  As  Hideyoshi  himself  died 
while  the  expedition  was  still  in  progress,  giving 
neither  explanation  nor  hint  of  his  real  motive,  it 
is  very  difficult  for  us  to  fathom  his  innermost 
thought.  It  would  not  be  altogether  a  mistaken 
idea,  however,  if  we  consider  it  as  an  outcome  of 


From  Mediaeval  to  Modern  Japan  281 

his  unifying  aspiration  carried  a  few  steps  farther 
outside  the  empire. 

When  we  consider  his  brilliant  career  from  its 
beginning,  the  amount  of  work  which  he  accom- 
plished greatly   exceeded  what  we   could  expect    ,. 
from  a  single  ordinary  mortal.     He  performed 
his  share  of  the  construction  of  new  Japan  ad- 
mirably.    As  to  the  organisation  of  what  Hide-  j'j 
yoshi  had  roughly  put  together,  it  was  reserved 
for  the  prudent  intelligence  of  lyeyasu  to  accom- 
plish. 


CHAPTER  XI 

THE     TOKUGAWA     SHOGUNATE, ITS     POLITICAL 

REGIME 

THE  spirit  of  the  coming  age  was  loudly  her- 
alded by  Nobunaga.  Most  of  the  hindrances 
which  had  persistently  obstructed  the  national 
progress  for  a  long  while  were  cleared  away  at 
his  peremptory  call.  Then  out  of  the  quarry 
opened  by  him  the  stones  for  the  new  pieces  of 
sculpture  were  hewn  out  by  his  successor  Hideyo- 
shi.  The  blocks,  however,  which  were  only 
roughcut  by  the  latter,  were  left  unfinished,  await- 
ing the  final  touch  of  wise  and  prudent  lyeyasu. 
The  Shogunate  which  he  set  up  at  Yedo,  now 
Tokyo,  in  the  province  of  Musashi,  continued  for 
more  than  two  centuries  and  a  half.  Not  only 
was  it  the  longest  in  duration  among  our  Shogun- 
ates,  but  it  exceeded  most  of  the  European  dynas- 
ties in  the  number  of  years  which  it  covered,  being 
a  little  longer  than  the  reign  of  the  Bourbons  in 
France,  including  that  of  the  branch  of  Orleans 
and  of  the  Restoration.  During  this  long  regime 
of  the  single  house  of  the  Tokugawa,  Japan  had 
been  able  to  prepare  herself  slowly  to  attain  the 

282 


The  Tokugawa  Shogunate     283 

stage  on  which  all  the  world  witnesses  her  now 
standing. 

The  history  of  Japan  under  this  Shogunate 
shows  that  throughout  the  whole  epoch  our  coun- 
try had  not  yet  been  entirely  stripped  of  her  me- 
dieval garments,  but  it  is  absurd  at  the  same  time 
to  designate  the  period  as  essentially  not  modern. 
For  long  years  we  have  been  on  our  forward 
march,  always  dragging  along  with  us  the  ever- 
accumulating  residue  of  the  civilisation  of  the 
past.  If  any  one,  however,  should  venture  to 
judge  us  by  the  enormous  heaps  of  these  souvenirs 
of  a  by-gone  civilisation  overburdening  us,  and 
should  say  that  the  Japanese  had  been  standing 
still  these  two  centuries  and  a  half,  then  he  would 
be  entirely  mistaken.  The  overestimation  of  Ja- 
pan of  the  Meidji  era  by  a  great  many  foreigners 
is,  though  seconded  by  not  a  few  Japanese,  a  fault 
which  had  its  origin  in  this  misapprehension  about 
our  country  under  the  Tokugawa  regime.  The 
attention  of  these  observers  was  engrossed,  when 
they  took  their  first  views  of  the  land  and  people, 
by  those  things  which  seemed  to  them  strange 
and  curious,  being  quite  different  from  what  they 
themselves  possessed  at  home,  or  which  were 
thought  by  them  anachronistic,  on  account  of  hav- 
ing been  abandoned  by  them  long  ago,  though  once 
they  had  them  also  in  their  own  countries.  As 
regards  what  they  had  been  accustomed  to  at 
home,  they  took  very  little  notice  of  it  in  Japan, 
and  considered  the  existence  of  such  things  in  our 


284  History  of  Japan 

country  as  a  matter  of  course,  if  they  happened 
to  come  across  them.  Most  of  them  came  over 
to  Japan,  prepossessed  already  by  their  expecta- 
tions of  finding  here  a  unique  country,  and  were 
thus  unconsciously  led,  after  their  view  of  the  coun- 
try itself,  to  depict  it  in  a  very  quaint  light,  as 
something  entirely  different  from  anything  they 
had  ever  experienced  anywhere;  an  error  which 
even  the  most  studious  and  acute  observer,  such 
as  Engelhardt  Kaempfer,  was  not  able  to  escape. 
No  need  to  mention  the  rest,  especially  those  mis- 
sionaries who  wished  to  extol  their  own  merits  at 
the  expense  of  the  Japanese.  We  are  still  suffer- 
ing from  misconceptions  about  our  country  on 
the  part  of  Europeans, — misconceptions  which  are 
the  legacy  of  the  misrepresentation  of  Japan  by 
those  early  observers.  By  no  means,  however, 
do  I  presume  to  try  to  exhibit  Japan  only  in  her 
brightest  colours.  Far  from  it,  and  what  I  ask 
foreign  readers  not  to  forget  is  that  the  history 
of  Japan  under  the  Tokugawa  Shogunate,  the 
period  which  was  essentially  modern,  should  not 
be  superficially  judged  by  its  abundance  of  feudal 
trammels  fondly  described  by  contemporary  Eur- 
opeans. In  this  chapter,  I  shall  first  make  mani- 
fest which  were  the  things  medieval  retained  in 
the  time  of  the  Tokugawa,  and  then  treat  about 
the  essential  character  of  the  age  which  should  be 
called  all  but  modern. 

In  the  foregoing  chapter  I  spoke  about  some 
resemblances  between  our  later  Ashikaga  period 


The  Tokugawa  Shogunate     285 

and  the  Italian  renaissance  of  the  Quattrocento. 
In  the  successive  phases  which  followed  in  the 
East  and  in  the  West,  there  might  be  found  some 
other  similarities.  History,  however,  has  not 
been  ordained  to  run  in  streams  exactly  parallel 
to  one  another  in  all  countries,  and  to  be  a  coun- 
terpart of  the  age  of  the  Reformation,  the  epochs 
of  the  Oda  and  the  Toyotomi  are  not  more  ap- 
propriate than  the  age  of  the  Kamakura  Shogun- 
ate. A  style  in  Japanese  art,  prevalent  during 
and  after  the  regime  of  Hideyoshi  and  called  "the 
Momoyama"  by  recent  connoisseurs  had  a  strik- 
ing resemblance  to  the  Empire  style,  which  fol- 
lowed the  Rococo  in  Europe,  and  in  some  respects 
indeed  the  later  Ashikaga  period  of  our  history 
might  be  likened  to  Europe  of  the  eighteenth  cen- 
tury, without  gross  inappropriateness,  while  at 
other  points  it  might  be  compared  to  the  Renais- 
sance with  equal  fairness.  It  would  be  very 
stupid,  however,  to  surmise  that  Japan  in  the 
Tokugawa  period  attained  to  a  culture  which  in 
its  general  aspect  belonged  almost  to  the  same 
stage  as  that  prevailing  in  Europe  in  the  early 
nineteenth  century.  Art,  though  an  important 
cultural  factor,  cannot  be  made  the  sole  criterion 
of  the  civilisation  of  any  nation  or  people.  It  is 
quite  indisputable  that  Japan  under  the  Toku- 
gawa Shogunate  had  many  things  about  which  we 
could  not  boast. 

So  long  as  war  is  a  calamity  unavoidable  in  this 
world,  it  is  folly  to  expect  in  any  country  that  the 


286  History  of  Japan 

cruelty  of  men  to  men  will  entirely  cease.  But 
if  the  intensity  of  cruelty  in  warfare  be  taken  as 
being  in  inverse  ratio  to  the  progress  of  civilisa- 
tion, as  it  generally  used  to  be,  then  the  Toku- 
gawa  period  evidently  should  not  be  lauded  as  an 
age  of  great  enlightenment.  Until  the  end  of  the 
Shogunate  of  this  house  it  had  been  the  custom 
for  a  warrior  on  the  battlefield  to  cut  off  the  head 
of  the  antagonist  whom  he  had  slain.  Though 
we  have  had  no  such  demoralising  sort  of  warfare 
in  our  history  as  that  carried  on  by  mercenary 
troops  in  medieval  Europe,  where  defeated  war- 
riors were  taken  prisoners  in  order  to  obtain  from 
them  as  rich  ransoms  as  they  could  afford  to  pay, 
in  other  words,  though  the  nature  of  warfare  in 
Japan  was  far  more  serious  in  general  than  in  the 
West,  it  was  on  that  account  far  more  dangerous 
for  the  combattants  engaged.  It  was  the  custom 
in  any  battle  to  reward  that  warrior  who  first  de- 
capitated an  enemy's  head  as  generously  as  one 
who  was  the  first  over  the  wall  in  an  attack  on 
a  fortress.  Moreover,  during  the  ceremony  in 
celebration  of  a  victory  on  a  battlefield,  all  those 
enemy  heads  were  collected  and  brought  for  the 
inspection  of  the  commanding  general  of  the  vic- 
torious army.  Such  a  custom  in  warfare,  however 
efficient  it  might  have  been  in  stimulating  the  mar- 
tial courage  of  warriors,  cannot  be  regarded  as 
praiseworthy  in  any  civilised  country,  even  where 
war  is  considered  as  the  highest  occupation  of 
the  people. 


The  Tokugawa  Shogunate     287 

The  Japanese  manner  of  suicide  called  hara- 
kiri  or  seppuku,  a  custom  of  world-wide  celebrity  > 
is  another  thing  which  is  well  to  be  commented  on 
here.  If  any  foreigner  should  suppose  that  sep- 
puku has  been  very  frequently  committed  in  the 
same  manner  as  we  see  it  practised  on  the  stage, 
he  would  be  greatly  misled  in  appreciating  the 
true  national  character  of  the  Japanese.  On  the 
contrary,  seppuku  has  not  been  a  matter  of  every- 
day occurrence,  having  taken  place  far  less  fre- 
quently than  one  hears  now-a-days  about  railway 
accidents.  Moreover,  when  it  was  performed,  it 
was  carried  out  in  decent  ways,  if  we  may  use  the 
word  decent  here,  and  not  in  the  grotesque  mode 
displayed  on  the  Japanese  stage,  accompanied  by 
sardonic  laughter,  with  bowels  exposed  after  cut- 
ting the  belly  crosswise.  The  reason  why  the 
Japanese  warrior  resorted  to  seppuku  in  commit- 
ting suicide  was  not  to  kill  himself  in  a  methodi- 
cally cruel  manner,  but  to  die  an  honourable  and 
manly  death  by  his  own  hand.  For  such  methods 
of  committing  suicide,  as  taking  poison,  drowning, 
strangling  oneself,  and  the  like,  were  considered 
very  ignoble,  and  especially  unworthy  of  warriors. 
Even  to  die  by  merely  cutting  one's  throat  was 
held  to  be  rather  effeminate.  The  fear  of  the 
protraction  of  the  death  agony  was  looked  on  as 
a  token  of  cowardice,  and  therefore  to  be  able  to 
kill  one's  self  in  the  most  sober  and  circumstantial 
manner,  and  at  the  same  time  to  do  it  with  every 
consideration  of  others,  was  thought  to  be  one  of 


288  History  of  Japan 

the  requisite  qualifications  of  a  brave  warrior  in 
an  emergency.  In  short,  for  a  suicide  to  be  hon- 
ourable, it  had  to  be  proved  that  it  was  not  the 
result  of  insanity.  Thus  we  can  see  that  not  the 
spirit  of  cruelty  but  martial  honour  was  the  mo- 
tive of  committing  seppuku,  and  it  would  be  un- 
fair to  stigmatise  the  Japanese  as  a  cruel  people 
because  of  the  practice.  Still  I  am  far  from  wish- 
ing to  vindicate  this  custom  in  all  its  aspects.  The 
fact  that  this  method  of  killing  one's  self  continued 
during  the  whole  of  the  Tokugawa  regime  as  a 
penalty,  without  loss  of  honour,  for  capital  crimes 
of  the  samurai  show  that  the  humane  culture  of 
the  age  left  much  to  be  wished  for. 

Class  distinction  was  another  dark  spot  on  the 
culture  of  the  age.  All  sorts  of  people  outside 
the  fighting  class  were  roughly  classified  into  three 
bodies,  that  is  to  say,  peasants,  artisans,  and  mer- 
chants, and  were  held  in  utter  subjection,  as  classes 
made  simply  to  be  governed.  But  the  often- 
quoted  tradition  that  warriors  of  that  time  had  as 
their  privilege  the  right  to  kill  any  of  the  com- 
monalty at  their  sweet  will  and  pleasure,  without 
the  risk  of  incurring  the  slightest  punishment 
thereby,  is  erroneous,  having  no  foundation  in 
real  historical  fact.  Those  warriors  who  had 
committed  a  homicide  were  without  prejudice 
called  upon  to  justify  their  act  before  the  proper 
authority.  If  they  failed  to  prove  that  they  were 
the  provoked  and  injured  party,  they  were  sure  to 
have  severe  penalties  inflicted  on  them.  On  the 


The  Tokugawa  Shogunate     289 

whole,  however,  the  common  people  in  the  Toku- 
gawa age  were  looked  down  upon  by  warriors  as 
inferiors  in  reasoning  and  understanding,  and 
therefore  as  disqualified  to  participate  in  public 
affairs,  social  as  well  as  political.  That  their  in- 
tellectual defects  must  have  been  due  to  their  ne- 
glected education  was  a  matter  clean  put  out  of 
mind.  As  regards  the  respective  professions  of 
the  above-mentioned  three  classes  of  plebeians, 
agriculture  was  thought  to  be  the  most  honourable, 
on  account  of  producing  the  staple  food-material, 
so  that  warriors,  especially  of  the  lower  classes, 
did  not  disdain  to  engage  in  tilling  the  lands  alot- 
ted  to  them  or  in  exploring  new  arable  lands.  The 
peasants  themselves,  however,  were  not  so  greatly 
esteemed  on  account  of  their  engaging  in  a  pro- 
fession which  was  held  honourable.  Handicrafts 
in  general  and  artisans  employed  in  them  had  not 
been  held  particularly  respectable  by  themselves, 
but  as  the  profession  was  productive,  it  was  recog- 
nised as  indispensable,  despised  by  no  means. 
Moreover,  many  artistic  geniuses,  who  had  come 
out  of  the  innumerable  multitudes  of  artisans  of 
various  trades,  have  been  held  in  very  high  regard 
in  our  country,  where  the  people  have  the  reputa- 
tion of  being  one  of  the  most  artistic  in  the  world; 
and  those  articles  of  rare  talent  unwittingly  raised 
the  esteem  of  the  crafts  in  which  they  were  en- 
gaged. That  which  was  most  despised  as  a  pro- 
fession was  the  business  of  merchants  in  all  lines, 
for  to  gain  by  buying  and  selling  was  thought 


290  History  of  Japan 

from  times  past  to  be  a  transaction  approaching 
almost  to  chicanery,  and  therefore  by  no  means 
to  be  encouraged  from  the  standpoint  of  national 
and  martial  morals.  Pedlars  and  small  shop* 
keepers  were  therefore  simply  held  in  contempt. 
Great  merchants,  however,  though  not  much  es- 
teemed on  account  of  their  profession,  were  gen- 
erally treated  with  due  consideration  in  virtue  of 
their  amassed  wealth.  Only  too  frequently  had 
the  Shogunate,  as  well  as  various  daimyo,  been 
obliged  to  stoop  to  court  the  goodwill  of  rich 
merchants  in  order  to  get  money  from  them. 

The  methods  of  taxation  were  very  arbitrary, 
and  the  person  and  the  rights  of  property  of  in- 
dividuals were  not  very  highly  respected  at  that 
time,  the  common  people  under  the  Shogunate 
being  often  subjected  to  hard  and  brutal  treat- 
ment, their  persons  maltreated  and  injured  and 
their  properties  confiscated  on  various  trifling  pre- 
tences. Though  the  way  to  petition  was  not  abso- 
lutely debarred  to  them,  it  was  made  very  irk- 
some and  perilous  for  plebeians  to  sue  and  obtain 
a  hearing  for  their  manifold  complaints.  On  the 
other  hand,  as  they  were  not  recognised  as  a  part 
of  the  nation  to  be  necessarily  consulted,  and  as 
the  vox  populi  was  not  heeded  in  the  management 
of  public  affairs,  their  education  was  not  regarded 
as  an  indispensable  duty  of  the  government.  No 
serious  endeavour  had  ever  been  made  to  improve 
the  common  people  intellectually,  nor  to  raise  their 
standard  of  living.  If  a  number  of  them  showed 


The  Tokugawa  Shogunate     291 

themselves  able  to  behave  like  gentle  folk,  as  if 
they  had  been  warriors  by  birth  and,  therefore, 
well-educated,  they  were  rewarded  as  men  of  ex- 
traordinary merits  such  as  could  not  be  reason- 
ably expected  of  them. 

The  status  of  the  political  organisation  of  the 
country  during  the  Tokugawa  regime  was  also 
what  ought  to  be  called  medieval,  if  we  draw  our 
conclusions  from  the  materials  ranged  on  the 
darker  side  only.  The  country  had  been  divided 
into  parcels,  large  and  small,  numbering  in  all 
a  little  less  than  three  hundred,  each  with  a  terri- 
torial lord  or  a  daimyo  as  its  quasi-independent 
autocratic  ruler.  The  frontier  line  dividing  ad- 
jacent territories  belonging  to  different  daimyo 
used  to  be  guarded  very  vigilantly  on  both  sides, 
and  passage,  both  in  and  out,  was  minutely  scru- 
tinised. For  that  purpose  numerous  barrier-gates 
were  set  up  along  and  within  the  boundary.  Any 
land  bounded  by  such  frontiers,  and  conferred  on 
a  daimyo  by  the  Shogunate  as  his  hereditary  pos- 
session, was  by  its  nature  a  self-constituted  state, 
the  political  system  prevailing  within  which  having 
been  modelled  after  that  of  the  Shogunate  itself. 
At  the  same  time  the  territory  of  a  daimyo  was 
economically  a  self-providing,  self-sufficient  body. 
To  become  in  such  wise  independent  at  least  was 
the  ideal  of  the  daimyo  possessing  the  territory 
or  of  the  territorial  statesmen  under  him.  In 
other  words,  the  territory  of  a  daimyo  was  an  en- 
tity, political  and  economical.  In  each  territory 


292  History  of  Japan 

certain  kinds  of  produce  from  those  confines  had 
been  strictly  prohibited  by  regulation  to  be  ex- 
ported beyond  the  frontier,  for  fear  that  there 
might  sometimes  occur  a  scarcity  of  those  com- 
modities for  the  use  of  the  inhabitants  of  the  ter- 
ritory, or  lest  other  territories  should  imitate  the 
cultivation  of  like  kinds  of  produce,  so  that  the 
value  of  their  own  commodities  might  decrease 
thereby.  In  case  of  a  famine,  that  is  to  say,  of 
the  failure  of  rice  crops  in  a  territory,  a  phenome- 
non which  has  by  no  means  been  of  rare  occur- 
rence in  our  country,  the  export  of  cereals  used 
to  be  forbidden  in  most  of  the  neighboring  terri- 
tories, even  when  they  had  a  "bumper  crop." 
Such  an  internal  embargo  testifies  that  not  only 
had  Japan  been  closed  against  foreigners,  but 
within  herself  each  territory  cared  only  for  its 
own  welfare,  adhering  to  a  mercantilist  principle, 
as  if  it  stood  quite  secluded  from  the  rest  of  the 
country.  Very  little  of  the  cohesion  necessary  to 
an  integral  state  could  be  perceived  in  Japan  of 
that  time. 

Such  was  the  condition  of  Japan  under  the 
Tokugawa  Shogunate  presented  to  the  eyes  of, 
and  easily  noticed  by,  the  foreign  observers,  who 
visited  our  country  at  the  beginning  and  the  mid- 
dle of  the  period.  Nay,  many  of  the  foreigners 
who  wrote  about  our  land  and  people  seem  to 
have  shared  nearly  the  same  views  as  above.  In 
truth,  however,  many  important  factors  of  the 
Japanese  history  of  this  epoch  have  been  omitted 


The  Tokugawa  Shogunate     293 

by  them,  and  the  idea  they  could  form  of  Japan 
from  the  one-sided  and  scanty  material  at  their 
disposal  was  only  a  very  incomplete  image  of 
modern  Japanese  civilisation.  I  shall,  therefore, 
try  to  give  a  general  survey  of  the  political  and 
social  condition  of  our  country  from  the  begin- 
ning of  the  seventeenth  century  down  to  the  Revo- 
lution of  the  Meidji,  and  then  shall  treat  in  brief 
about  the  civilisation  of  the  age. 

The  Shogunate  of  the  house  of  the  Tokugawa 
was  not  an  entirely  new  invention.  It  was  a  par- 
tial recognition  of  the  old  regime  which  lyeyasu 
had  inherited  from  Hideyoshi,  as  far  as  the  ter- 
ritorial lords  were  concerned,  who  were  installed 
or  recognised  anterior  to  the  advent  of  lyeyasu 
to  power.  Though  a  great  many  of  the  former 
feudatories,  especially  those  who  had  been  faith- 
ful to  the  House  of  the  Toyotomi  to  the  last, 
had  been  killed  or  deprived  of  their  possessions 
after  the  decisive  battle  of  Sekigahara,  not  a  few 
of  them  survived,  counting  among  them  the  most 
powerful  of  the  daimyo,  the  House  of  Mayeta, 
who  was  the  master  of  Kaga  and  two  other 
provinces  on  the  Sea  of  Japan.  The  lords  of 
this  kind  had  formerly  been  the  equals  of  the 
Tokugawa,  when  the  latter  was  standing  under 
the  protection  of  Hideyoshi,  and  it  was  difficult 
for  the  new  Shogunate,  in  a  country  where  the 
Emperor  has  ever  been  the  paramount  sovereign, 
to  make  those  lords  formally  swear  the  oath  of 
fealty  to  itself.  The  nature  of  the  sovereignty, 


294  History  of  Japan 

therefore,  of  the  Tokugawa  over  the  feudatories 
aforesaid  was  only  that  of  primus  inter  pares. 
The  daimyo  who  stood  in  this  relation  to  the 
Shogunate  were  called  tozama. 

The  rest  of  the  daimyo,  together  with  the  body- 
guard of  the  Shogun,  the  so-called  "eighty  thou- 
sand" with  their  habitual  residence  at  Yedo,  made 
up  the  hereditary  retainers  or  fudai.  The  non- 
domestic  daimyo  had  nothing  to  do  with  the  Sho- 
gun's  central  government,  all  the  posts  of  which, 
from  such  high  functionaries  as  the  rochu  or  el- 
ders, who  were  none  other  than  the  cabinet  min- 
isters of  the  Shogunate,  down  to  such  petty  offi- 
cials as  scribes  and  watchmen,  had  been  all  filled 
with  domestics  of  various  grades.  As  far  as  these 
domestics  or  direct  retainers  of  the  Shogunate 
were  concerned,  the  military  regime  of  the  Toku- 
gawa can  be  held  to  have  been  a  revived  form 
of  that  of  Kamakura.  In  the  former,  however, 
the  disparity  in  power  and  wealth  between  the 
upper  and  the  lower  domestics  of  the  Shogun  was 
far  more  remarkable  than  it  had  been  among  the 
retainers  of  the  latter,  that  is  to  say,  the  djito. 
The  term  "go-kenin,"  held  to  be  honourable  in  the 
time  of  Kamakura,  became,  in  the  Tokugawa 
period,  a  designation  of  the  lowest  order  of  the 
direct  vassals  of  the  Shogun.  A  certain  number 
belonging  to  the  upper  class  of  the  fudai  or  do- 
mestics of  the  Tokugawa  Shogunate  were  made 
daimyo,  and  placed  on  the  same  footing  as  feuda- 
tories of  historical  lineage,  the  former  equals  of 


The  Tokugawa  Shogunate     295 

the  Tokugawa,  and  formed  with  them  henceforth 
the  highest  military  nobility  of  the  country.  The 
remainder  of  the  domestics,  who  were  not  raised  to 
the  rank  of  daimyo,  were  comprised  under  the 
name  of  hatamoto,  which  means  "under  the  stand- 
ard," that  is  to  say,  the  Body-guard  of  the  Sho- 
gun.  Among  the  members  of  this  body  there 
were  indeed  numerous  scales  of  gradation.  The 
lowest  of  them  had  to  lead  a  very  miserable  and 
straitened  life  in  some  obscure  corners  of  the  city 
of  Yedo,  while  the  best  of  them  stood  as  regards 
income  very  near  to  minor  daimyo,  and  were  of- 
ten more  influential.  Their  political  status,  how- 
ever, notwithstanding  manifold  differences  in  rank 
among  them,  was  all  the  same,  all  being  equally, 
direct  vassals  of  the  Shogunate,  and  having  no 
regular  warriors  or  samurai  as  their  own  vassals. 
They,  therefore,  belonged  to  the  lowest  grade  of 
the  privileged  classes  in  the  military  hierarchy, 
and  in  this  respect  there  was  no  cardinal  difference 
between  them  and  the  common  samurai  who  were 
vassals  of  ordinary  daimyo.  That  they  were, 
however,  the  immediate  subjects  of  the  Shogun, 
and  that  they  did  not  owe  fealty  to  any  daimyo, 
who  was  in  reality  subordinate  at  least  to  the  Sho- 
gun, if  not  his  vassal  in  name,  placed  them  in  a 
status  like  that  of  the  knights  immediate  of  the 
Holy  Roman  Empire  or  of  the  mediatised  princes 
of  recent  Germany;  in  short,  above  the  status 
of  ordinary  samurai  attached  to  an  ordinary 
daimyo.  Strictly  speaking,  between  these  two 


296  History  of  Japan 

there  interposed  another  group  of  samurai.  They 
were  the  vassals  of  the  three  daimyo  of  extraordi- 
nary distinction,  of  Nagoya  in  the  province  of 
Owari,  of  Wakayama  in  the  province  of  Kii,  and 
of  Mito  in  the  province  of  Hitachi.  All  these 
three  being  of  the  lateral  branches  of  the  Toku- 
gawa,  were  held  in  specially  high  regard,  and  put 
at  the  topmost  of  all  the  other  daimyo,  so  that 
their  vassals  considered  themselves  to  be  quasi- 
hatamoto  and  therefore  above  the  "common"  or 
"garden"  samurai. 

The  daimyo  acted  as  virtual  potentates  in  ter- 
ritories granted  to  them,  and  held  a  court  and 
a  government  there,  both  modelled  largely  after 
the  household  and  the  government  of  the  Sho- 
gun  at  Yedo.  The  better  part  of  the  daimyo  re- 
sided in  castles  built  imposingly  after  the  archi- 
tectural style  of  the  fortresses  in  Europe  at  that 
time,  the  technic  having  perhaps  been  introduced 
along  with  Christianity,  and  they  led  a  life  far 
more  easy  and  elegant,  though  more  regular,  than 
the  shugo  of  the  Ashikaga  age.  It  has  been  as- 
cribed, by  the  way,  to  the  rare  sagacity  of  lyeyasu 
as  a  politician,  that  the  territories  of  the  two 
kinds  of  daimyo,  tozama  and  fudai,  were  so 
adroitly  juxtaposed,  that  the  latter  were  able  to 
keep  watch  over  the  former's  attitude  toward  the 
Shogunate. 

The  daimyo  were  ranked  according  to  the  offi- 
cially estimated  amount  of  rice  to  be  produced  in 
the  territory  of  each.  In  the  time  of  Kamakura, 


The  Tokugawa  Shogunate     297 

the  renumeration  of  the  djito  was  counted  by 
the  area  of  ricefields  in  the  manor  entrusted  to  his 
care.  By  and  by,  the  land  which  was  the  source 
of  the  renumeration  for  a  djito  came  to  be  par- 
titioned among  his  numerous  descendants,  and 
some  of  the  portions  allotted  became  so  small, 
that  it  was  but  ridiculous  to  think  of  exercising 
the  jurisdiction  of  military  police  over  them. 
Area  of  land  began  to  cease  thus  to  be  the  stand- 
ard of  valuation  of  the  income  of  a  djito  t  when 
the  office  of  djito  meant  only  the  «^mohiment  ac- 
companying it,  and  no  longer  carried  with  it  the 
responsibility  incumbent  on  it  at  its  first  estab- 
lishment. The  ultimate  result  of  such  a  change 
was  that  the  quantity  or  the  price  of  rice  pro- 
duced began  to  be  adopted  gradually  as  the  stand- 
ard of  valuation  of  the  income  of  territorial  lords, 
and  for  a  while  the  two  standards  were  in  use 
together  till  the  end  of  the  Ashikaga  age.  More- 
over, infrequently  part  of  the  income  of  a  shugo 
was  reckoned  by  the  quantity  of  rice,  while  an- 
other part  of  the  income  of  the  same  shugo  was 
assessed  by  the  sale-price  of  the  rice  cultivated. 
This  promiscuous  way  of  valuation,  however, 
caused  great  irregularity  and  confusion.  For, 
added  to  the  disagreement  about  the  real  quantity 
of  rice  produced  and  the  amount  registered  to 
be  produced,  the  price  of  the  cereal  itself  had 
been  so  ceaselessly  fluctuating  according  to  the 
inconstant  condition  of  crops,  that  there  was  no 
such  thing  as  a  regular  standard  price  of  rice 


298  History  of  Japan 

invariably  applicable  to  any  year  and  to  any  lo- 
cality. Nevertheless,  in  an  age  when  no  uniform 
system  of  currency  was  established  and  to  accept 
any  coin  at  its  face  value  was  an  impossible  mat- 
ter, in  other  words,  when  it  was  difficult  to  rep- 
resent the  price  of  rice  in  any  sort  of  coin  then 
in  use,  to  make  a  standard  of  value,  not  of  the 
actual  amount  of  rice  but  of  its  unceasingly  vacil- 
lating price,  could  not  but  cause  a  great  deal  of 
inconvenience  and  confusion.  We  can  easily  see 
from  the  above  that  the  quantity  of  rice  was  by 
far  the  surer  means  of  bargaining  than  the  money, 
which  was  not  only  indeterminate  in  value  but  in- 
sufficient to  boot.  Hideyoshi,  therefore,  put  a 
stop  to  the  use  of  the  method  of  indicating  the 
income  of  a  territorial  lord  by  its  valuation  in 
money,  and  decreed  that  henceforth  only  the  year- 
ly estimated  yield  of  rice,  counted  by  the  koku  as 
a  unit,  should  be  adopted  as  the  means  of  denot- 
ing the  revenue  of  a  territory,  a  koku  roughly 
corresponding  to  five  bushels  in  English  measure. 
The  land-survey,  which  he  undertook  on  a  grand 
scale  throughout  the  whole  empire,  had  as  its 
main  purpose  to  measure  the  area  of  land  classed 
as  rice-fields  in  the  territories  of  the  daimyo,  ac- 
cording to  the  units  newly  decreed,  and  to  make 
the  estimate  of  the  amount  of  rice  said  to  be  pro- 
duced commensurate  as  nearly  as  possible  with  the 
average  crop  realisable.  Withal,  the  inequality 
of  the  standard  of  estimate  in  different  localities 
was  rectified  by  this  assessment  of  Hideyoshi's. 


The  Tokugawa  Shogunate     299 

This  method  of  estimating  the  income  of  a 
dalmyo  had  come  into  general  use  since  the  be- 
ginning of  the  Tokugawa  Shogunate.  As  there 
was  then  no  system  in  our  country  of  gradating 
the  dalmyo  by  titles,  such  as  dukes,  counts,  and  so 
forth,  the  estimated  annual  yield  of  rice  in 
koku  was  used  as  the  sole  means  of  de- 
termining the  rank  of  the  lords  of  the  various 
territories  in  the  long  queue  of  the  Tokugawa 
dalmyo ,  with  the  exception  of  a  very  few  who  had 
been  placed  in  a  comparatively  high  rank  on  ac- 
count of  their  specially  noble  lineage  or  the  unique 
position  of  their  families  in  the  national  history, 
though  most  of  the  nobles  belonging  to  the  latter 
class  were  classed  as  an  intervening  group.  The 
minimum  number  of  koku  assigned  to  a  daimyo 
was  ten  thousand.  As  regards  the  maximum  num- 
ber of  kokuy  there  was  no  legal  limit.  One  who 
stood,  however,  highest  in  order  was  the  above- 
mentioned  House  of  Mayeta,  the  lord  of  Kaga 
etc.,  whose  domain  was  assessed  at  more  than  a 
million  koku.  About  three  hundred  daimyo,  who 
were  ranged  between  the  two  extremes,  were  di- 
vided into  three  orders.  All  those  worth  more 
than  two  hundred  thousand  koku  formed  a  class 
of  the  daimyo  major,  and  those  worth  less  than 
one  hundred  thousand  were  comprised  in  a  group 
of  the  daimyo  minor,  while  the  rest,  that  is  to 
say,  those  between  one  and  two  hundred  thousand 
formed  the  middle  corps. 

In  the  Shogun's  court,  a  seat  was  assigned  to 


3OO  History  of  Japan 

each  daimyo  in  a  specified  room,  according  to  the 
class  to  which  he  belonged.  One  could,  there- 
fore, easily  tell  the  rank  of  a  daimyo  by  the  name 
of  the  room  in  which  he  had  to  wait  when  he 
attended  on  the  Shogun.  All  daimyo,  almost 
without  exception,  had  to  move  in  and  out  at  fixed 
intervals  between  his  terrtory,  where  his  castle 
or  camp  stood,  and  Yedo,  where  he  kept,  or,  to 
say  more  correctly,  was  granted  by  the  Shogun, 
residences,  generally  more  than  two  in  number. 
The  interval  allowed  to  a  daimyo  for  remaining 
in  his  territory  varied  according  to  the  distance 
of  that  territory  from  Yedo,  being  the  shorter 
and  oftener  for  the  nearer.  He  was  obliged  to 
leave  his  wife  and  children  constantly  in  one  of 
his  residences  at  Yedo,  as  hostages  for  his  fidelity 
to  the  Shogun.  As  to  the  vassals  or  samurai,  of 
a  daimyo }  there  were  also  two  sorts.  By  far  the 
greater  part  of  the  samurai  belonging  to  a  daimyo 
had  their  dwellings  in  their  master's  territory,  gen- 
erally in  the  vicinity  of  his  castle.  These  samu- 
rai were  the  main  support  of  their  lord,  and  had 
to  accompany  him  by  turns  in  his  official  tour  to 
Yedo  and  back.  The  rest  of  the  samurai  under 
the  same  lord,  a  band  which  formed  the  small 
minority,  lived  constantly  in  Yedo,  each  family  in 
a  compartment  of  the  accessory  buildings  sur- 
rounding the  lord's  residence  like  a  colony.  These 
were  as  a  rule  men  who  were  enlisted  into  the 
service  of  a  daimyo  more  for  the  sake  of  making 
a  gallant  show  at  his  official  and  social  functions 


The  Tokugawa  Shogunate     301 

at  Yedo,  than  for  the  sake  of  strengthening  his 
fighting  forces.  It  was  natural  that  men  accus- 
tomed to  the  polished  life  of  the  military  capital 
were  thought  better  qualified  to  fulfil  such  func- 
tions than  the  rustic  samurai  fresh  from  his  ter- 
ritories who  were  good  only  for  fighting  and  other 
serious  kinds  of  business.  While  a  daimyo  was 
absent  in  his  territory,  a  samurai  of  his,  belong- 
ing to  this  metropolitan  group,  was  entrusted 
with  the  care  of  his  residences  and  their  occu- 
pants in  Yedo,  and  also  with  the  duty  of  receiving 
orders  from  the  Shogunate  or  of  transacting  inter- 
territorial  business  with  representatives  of  other 
daimyo  at  Yedo.  The  meetings  held  by  these  rep- 
resentatives of  the  daimyo  were  said  to  be  one 
of  the  most  fashionable  gatherings  in  Yedo.  That 
the  doyen  of  such  functionaries  had  a  certain  pres- 
tige over  others,  was  very  similar  to  the  usage 
among  the  diplomatic  corps  in  Europe. 

The  samurai  who  had  their  abode  in  their 
lord's  territory,  however,  represented  the  real 
strength  of  a  daimyo,  and  were  the  soul  and  body 
of  the  whole  military  regime.  The  number  of 
samurai  in  a  territory  differed  according  to  the 
rank  and  the  resources  of  a  daimyo.  Some  of 
the  powerful  nobles  counted  more  than  ten  thou- 
sand regular  samurai  under  them,  while  minor 
ones  could  maintain  only  a  few  hundred  as  neces- 
sary retainers.  In  the  latter  case  almost  all  of 
the  samurai  had  their  dwellings  clustering  around 
the  castle  or  camp  of  their  lord.  If  there  were 


302  History  of  Japan 

any  samurai  who  lived  outside  of  the  residential 
town,  they  led  an  agricultural  rather  than  a  sol- 
dierly life.  The  relation  of  vassalage  in  such  a 
territory  was  simple,  for  under  the  samurai  con- 
sisting of  a  single  order  there  was  no  swords- 
wearer  serving  them.  In  the  territory  of  the  pow- 
erful daimyo,  however,  especially  in  those  of  the 
big  daimyo  in  Kyushu  and  the  northern  part  of 
Honto,  comprising  an  area  of  two  or  more  aver- 
age provinces  in  Middle  Japan,  the  relation  of 
vassalage  was  very  complicated,  sometimes  form- 
ing a  feudalism  of  the  second  order.  That  is  to 
say,  the  most  influential  samurai  under  those 
daimyo  had  also  their  own  small  territory  granted 
by  their  lord,  just  as  the  latter  had  his  granted  or 
recognised  by  the  Shogunate,  and  held  several 
hundred  swords-wearers,  non-commissioned  sam- 
urai, in  their  service.  It  was  not  rare  that  some 
of  these  magnates  surpassed  in  income  many 
minor  independent  daimyo,  and  had  in  their  hands 
the  destiny  of  a  greater  number  of  people,  for 
their  emolument  rose  often  to  twenty  or  thirty 
thousand  koku.  Their  rank  in  the  military  re- 
gime, however,  was  indisputably  lower  than  that 
of  the  smallest  of  daimyo,  on  account  of  their 
being  only  indirectly  subordinate  to  the  Shogun. 
In  all  territories  throughout  the  whole  coun- 
try, the  emolument  of  the  samurai  was  granted  in 
the  form  of  land,  or  of  rice  from  the  granaries 
of  the  daimyo,  or  paid  in  cash.  Sometimes  we 
see  a  combination  of  two  or  three  of  these  forms 


The  Tokugawa  Shogunate     303 

given  to  one  samurai.  Besides  this  pay  a  patch 
of  ground  was  allotted  to  each  samurai  as  his 
homestead,  and  a  part  of  that  ground  used  to  be 
cultivated  to  produce  vegetables  for  family  con- 
sumption. In  whatever  form  a  samurai  might 
receive  his  stipend,  it  was  officially  denoted  by 
the  number  of  koku,  registered  as  his  nominal  in- 
come, and  that  very  number  determined  his  po- 
sition in  the  list  of  vassals  of  a  daimyo,  unless 
he  came  from  an  extraordinarily  distinguished 
lineage.  As  regards  the  maximum  and  the  mini- 
mum number  of  koku  given  to  samurai,  there  was 
no  uniform  standard  applicable  to  all  of  the  ter- 
ritories. Such  powerful  daimyo  as  Mayeta  in 
Kaga,  Shimatsu  in  Satsuma,  and  Date  in  Mutsu 
own^d  many  vassal-samurai  who  were  so  puis- 
sant as  to  be  fairly  comparable  to  small  daimyo, 
while  in  the  territories  of  the  latter,  a  samurai  of 
pretty  high  position  in  his  small  territorial  circle 
received  an  allowance  of  koku  so  scant  that  one 
of  the  lowest  rank,  if  he  were  a  regular  samurai, 
would  disdain  to  receive  in  big  territories.  Gen- 
erally speaking,  however,  one  hundred  koku  was 
considered  to  be  an  average  standard,  applicable 
to  samurai  under  any  daimyo,  to  distinguish  those 
of  the  respectable  or  official  class  from  those  of 
the  non-commissioned  or  subaltern  class.  Only 
the  samurai  above  this  standard  could  keep  serv- 
ants bearing  two  swords,  long  and  short,  as  a 
samurai  himself  did.  Not  only  all  officers  in  time 
of  war,  but  all  high  civil  functionaries  in  the  ter- 


304  History  of  Japan 

ritorial  government  of  a  dalmyo  were  taken  from 
this  body  of  orthodox  samurai.  The  samurai  be- 
low this  level  could  keep  a  servant  wearing  only 
one  sword,  the  shorter,  and  they  had  to  serve 
their  lord  as  officials  of  the  inferior  class,  such  as 
scribes,  cashiers,  butlers,  etc. 

The  lowest  in  the  scale  of  the  military  regime 
was  the  group  of  ashigaru,  that  is  to  say,  of  the 
light  infantry.  Those  who  belonged  to  this  group, 
though  wearers  of  two  swords,  were  not  counted 
as  of  the  corps  of  samurai.  Being  legally  vassals 
of  a  daimyo,  they  had  yet  very  rare  chances  of 
serving  him  directly,  and  often  they  enlisted  into 
the  household  service  of  a  higher  samurai.  Be- 
tween the  ashigaru  and  the  regular  samurai,  there 
was  another  intermediate  group  of  two-sworded 
men,  called  kachi,  which  means  warriors-on-foot. 
In  feudal  times  all  warriors,  if  of  samurai  rank, 
were  presumed  to  be  cavaliers,  though  in  reality 
most  of  them  had  not  even  a  stable,  and  skill  in 
horsemanship  was  not  rigorously  required  from 
the  samurai  of  the  lower  class.  The  name  kachi, 
given  to  those  who  in  rank  came  next  to  the  samu- 
rai, implied  that  this  intermediate  group  of  quasi- 
samurai  was  not  allowed  to  ride  on  horse-back. 
This  group  was,  however,  much  nearer  to  the 
samurai  than  to  the  ashigaru  group. 

So  far  I  have  given  a  rough  sketch  of  the  grada- 
tions in  the  military  regime  in  the  territory  of  a 
daimyo.  It  should  be  here  noticed  that,  besides 
the  classes  above  stated,  there  were  many  other 


The  Tokugawa  Shogunate     305 

minor  groups  below  the  regular  samurai,  and 
that  there  were  also  diverse  heterogeneities  of 
system  in  the  territories  of  different  dalmyo. 
Needless  to  say  that  the  gradations  and  kinds  of 
InatamotOj  who  were  samurai  serving  directly  un- 
der the  Shogun,  were  far  more  multifarious  and 
complex  than  those  of  the  samurai  under  a 
dalmyo.  There  is  no  doubt,  however,  that  the 
apex  of  the  whole  military  regime  was  the  Sho- 
gun himself,  while  at  its  foundation  were  the 
sundry  samurai  who  numbered  perhaps  nearly 
half  a  million  families  in  all. 

All  the  lands  of  Japan  were  not  allotted  ex- 
haustively to  tKe  dalmyo  by  the  Shogunate.  On 
the  contrary,  immense  territories  in  various  parts 
of  the  empire,  amounting  to  four  millions  of  koku, 
was  reserved  to  the  Shogun  himself.  Important 
sea-ports,  such  as  Nagasaki,  Sakai,  and  Niigata, 
rich  mines  like  those  in  the  province  of  Iwami 
and  in  the  island  of  Sado,  the  vast  forest  of  Kiso 
in  the  province  of  Shinano,  and  so  forth,  were 
kept  in  the  hands  of  the  Shogunate,  out  of  eco- 
nomical as  well  as  political  reasons.  With  the 
income  from  all  these  agricultural  and  industrial 
resources,  the  Shogunate  defrayed  all  the  govern- 
mental charges  and  the  expenses  of  national  de- 
fence, as  well  as  the  enormous  civil  list  of  the 
Shogun  himself,  who  maintained  a  very  luxurious 
court.  The  stipend  for  the  lower  class  of  hata- 
moto,  who  had  no  land  allotted  to  them,  was  paid 
also  with  the  rice  raised  in  the  Shogun's  domain 


306  History  of  Japan 

or  bought  with  his  money  and  stored  in  Yedo. 
As  to  the  fiscal  system  and  the  direct  domain  of  a 
daimyo  in  his  territory,  it  is  needless  to  say  that 
everywhere  the  imitation  of  that  of  the  Shogun 
prevailed,  conducted  only  on  a  smaller  scale. 

The  relation  of  the  Shogunate  to  the  Emperor 
at  Kyoto  was  on  the  whole  but  a  continuation  of 
the  same  status  as  in  the  time  of  Hideyoshi.  Since 
the  Fujiwara  period  state  affairs  had  ceased  to  be 
conducted  personally  by  the  Emperor  himself. 
The  regent,  who  was  at  first,  and  ought  to  have 
been  ever  after,  appointed  during  the  minority  or 
the  illness  of  an  Emperor,  became  identical  with 
the  highest  ministerial  post,  and  lost  its  extra- 
ordinary character.  It  is  true  that  some  of  the 
able  emperors,  dissatisfied  with  such  a  state  of 
things,  tried  to  take  the  reins  of  government  into 
their  own  hands  again,  and  some  succeeded  for 
a  while  in  the  recovery  of  their  political  power, 
so  far  as  their  relations  with  the  Fujiwara  family 
were  concerned.  What  they  could  recover,  how- 
ever, was  not  all  of  the  prestige  which  had  slipped 
out  of  the  hands  of  their  predecessors.  For  on 
account  of  the  lassitude  of  the  Fujiwara  court- 
nobles,  the  power  which  they  had  once  arrogated 
to  themselves  passed  into  the  possession  of  the 
newly  arisen  warrior  class,  and  what  those  em- 
perors could  recover  was  only  a  part  of  what  still 
remained  in  the  hands  of  the  Fujiwara.  The 
Emperor  Go-Daigo  was  the  last  who  tried  desper- 
ately to  resume  the  imperial  prerogative  once 


The  Tokugawa  Shogunate     307 

wrested  from  the  Kamakura  Shogunate,  and  he 
succeeded  in  his  endeavour.  He  could  not,  how- 
ever, prevent  the  advent  to  power  of  the  new 
Shogunate  of  the  Ashikaga.  After  that,  through 
the  most  turbulent  age  in  the  history  of  Japan, 
which  continued  to  the  time  of  Hideyoshi,  the 
imperial  household  could  sustain  itself  only 
meagrely  on  the  scanty  income  from  a  few  es- 
tates. But  however  lacking  in  power  and  material 
resource  the  Emperor  might  have  been,  he  still 
continued  to  be  the  source  and  fountain  of  honour 
as  ever,  and  everybody  clearly  knew  that  he  was, 
being  held  divine,  indisputably  higher  than  the 
Shogun,  who  was  obliged  to  obey  if  the  Emperor 
chose  to  command.  What  was  to  be  regretted 
was  that  no  Emperor  had  been  strong  enough  to 
command.  The  saying  "le  roi  regne,  mais  il  ne 
gouverne  pas"  has  never  been  accepted  in  our 
country  as  the  constitutional  principle.  That  the 
imperial  prestige  was  never  totally  lost  even  in 
the  depths  of  the  turmoil  of  war  may  be  proved 
by  the  fact  that  the  Emperor  often  interceded  in 
struggles  between  various  daimyo,  who  waged 
weary  and  acrimonious  wars  against  one  another. 
The  political  situation  of  the  Emperor,  however, 
had  been  unsettled  for  a  long  while,  only  because 
the  situation  had  remained  for  long  not  urgent 
enough  to  require  to  be  made  instantly  clear.  If 
it  had  had  to  be  solved  at  once,  without  doubt  it 
must  have  been  solved  in  favour  of  the  Emperor. 
Especially  after  the  civil  war  of  the  Ohnin  era, 


308  History  of  Japan 

to  restore  the  nominal  power,  of  which  the  Sho- 
gun  of  the  Ashikaga  family  was  in  possession, 
would  have  added  nothing  substantial  to  the  real 
power  of  the  then  Emperor,  for  the  Shogunate 
of  that  time  was  but  a  scapegoat  in  the  hands  of 
impudent  and  adventurous  warriors.  Even  the 
prestige  of  the  Emperor  and  the  Shogun  com- 
bined would  not  have  sufficed  to  achieve  any- 
thing momentous  at  that  period,  when  the  coun- 
try had  been  so  torn  asunder  as  not  to  be  easily 
united  and  pacified.  What  was  most  needed  in 
Japan  of  that  time  was  a  fresh,  strong,  energetic 
military  dictator. 

Nobunaga,  who  came  soon  after  the  Ashikaga, 
was  endued,  at  the  height  of  his  power,  with  a 
civil  title  belonging  to  the  regime  of  court-nobles, 
and  had  not,  until  his  untimely  death,  been  in- 
vested by  the  Emperor  with  the  Shogunate.  Hav- 
ing sprung  from  a  warrior  family  which  had  been 
originally  subservient  to  one  of  the  retainers  of 
the  Shogunate,  he  would  perhaps  have  been  loth 
himself  to  be  looked  on  as  an  usurper  even  after 
he  had  ceased  to  assist  the  Shogun,  who  survived 
him.  Moreover,  during  his  whole  life,  it  was  im- 
possible for  him  to  become  the  virtual  master  of 
the  whole  of  Japan.  It  was  Hideyoshi,  his  vassal 
and  successor,  who  succeeded  at  last  in  the  unifica- 
tion of  long-disturbed  Japan  by  dint  of  arms.  He, 
however,  was  also  not  invested  with  the  Shogun- 
ate. It  is  said  that  he  would  have  liked,  indeed, 
to  become  one,  but  was  dissuaded  from  it,  having 


The  Tokugawa  Shogunate     309 

been  reminded  that  he  did  not  belong  to  either 
the  Minamoto  or  the  Taira,  the  two  renowned 
warrior-families  which  were  historically  thought 
to  be  the  only  ones  qualified  to  provide  the  gen- 
eralissimo, the  Shogun.  After  his  death  and  the 
subsequent  defeat  of  the  partisans  of  his  family 
in  the  decisive  battle  of  Sekigahara  in  1600,  lye- 
yasu  Tokugawa,  who  gave  himself  out  as  the  de- 
scendant of  Minamoto-no-Yoshiiye,  succeeded  to 
the  power  as  Shogun  in  1603.  With  this  political 
change  the  Emperor  had  really  very  little  to  do, 
except  to  give  recognition  to  the  fait  accompli. 
The  selection  of  Yedo  by  lyeyasu  as  the  site 
of  the  new  Shogunate  created  a  political  situation 
like  that  of  Kamakura  by  Yoritomo.  It  is  even 
said  that  lyeyasu  himself  in  organising  the  new 
military  regime  made  the  system  of  the  Kama- 
kura Shogunate  his  model. 

By  the  establishment  of  the  Tokugawa  Sho- 
gunate, no  marked  change  occurred  in  the  Em- 
peror's position  as  supreme  sovereign  of  the  coun- 
try as  ever,  but  the  Shogunate  conducted  the  state 
business  as  the  regent  entrusted  with  the  whole 
care  of  the  island  Empire,  so  that  the  govern- 
ment at  Yedo  had  no  occasion  to  refer  to  the 
court  at  Kyoto  to  obtain  the  imperial  sanction. 
In  this  respect  the  Shogunate  of  Yedo  was  de- 
cidedly more  independent  of  the  Imperial  Court 
than  had  been  the  Kamakura  Shogunate.  Kyoto, 
however,  continued  as  before  to  be  the  fountain- 
head  of  all  honour.  All  the  honours  and  titles 


3io  History  of  Japan 

of  the  dalmyo  were  conferred  in  the  name  of  the 
reigning  Emperor,  though  through  the  interme- 
diary of  the  Shogunate.  The  appellations  of 
these  distinctions  were  also  the  same  as  those 
given  to  court-nobles,  only  being  comparatively 
low  in  the  case  of  the  former,  if  we  take  the  real 
influence  of  the  daimyo  into  consideration.  For 
the  emoluments  of  court-nobles  in  the  time  of  the 
Tokugawa  were  generally  very  small,  and  the 
highest  of  them  could  only  match  materially  with 
the  middle  class  of  the  hatamoto  or  the  high  class 
vassals  of  some  powerful  daimyo.  All  the  mano- 
rial estates  which  the  court-nobles  had  retained 
until  the  middle  of  the  Ashikaga  period  had  since 
been  occupied  by  warriors  paramount  in  the  re- 
spective regions,  and  they  changed  their  master 
several  times  during  the  anarchical  disorders  at 
the  end  of  the  period,  so  that  restitution  became 
utterly  impossible.  The  total  amount  which  the 
Shogunate  at  Yedo  had  to  pay  to  the  court-nobles 
as  annual  honoraria  was  about  eighty  thousand 
koku. 

The  Imperial  Household  had  a  civil  list  amount- 
ing at  first  to  one  hundred  thousand  koku,  which 
was  more  than  three  times  what  it  had  been  at 
the  time  of  the  Ashikaga.  A  little  later  it  was 
increased  to  three  hundred  thousand  koku,  and 
the  sum  remained  stationary  at  that  figure  for 
more  than  half  a  century.  Then  an  annual  sub- 
sidy in  cash  between  thirty  and  forty  thousand 
ryo  was  added.  The  Empress  had  to  be  provided 


The  Tokugawa  Shogunate     311 

for  separately.  When  there  was  an  ex-Emperor 
or  Crown  Prince,  then  he  also  was  entitled  to  a 
separate  allowance  from  Yedo.  If  we  include, 
therefore,  the  emolument  paid  to  the  court-nobles, 
and  estimate  them  all  together  by  the  number  of 
koku,  the  Shogunate  had  to  pay  to  Kyoto  an  an- 
nual sum  of  between  four  and  five  hundred  thou- 
sand. Extraordinary  expenditures,  such  as  the 
rebuilding  of  the  imperial  palace,  were  also  part 
of  the  burden  of  the  Shogunate.  On  the  whole, 
the  financial  condition  of  the  court  at  Kyoto  was 
somewhat  more  straitened  than  that  of  the  most 
powerful  daimyo. 

With  his  income  as  stated  the  Emperor  main- 
tained his  court,  and  performed  historical  cere- 
monies, each  prescribed  for  a  certain  day  of  a 
certain  season.  He  did  not  need  to  trouble  him- 
self about  state  affairs,  for  all  such  matters  had 
been  delegated  de  facto  to  the  Shogunate,  or 
rather  the  Shogun  behaved  himself  as  if  he  were 
the  sole  agent  of  the  Emperor.  To  have  direct 
communication  with  the  Emperor  had  been  for- 
bidden to  all  daimyo.  The  Shogun,  on  his  part, 
entrusted  everything  concerning  local  affairs  to  the 
daimyo.  As  to  the  judicial  procedure,  that  of 
the  Shogunate  was  taken  as  the  model  by  all 
daimyo.  There  still  prevailed  a  great  many  pe- 
culiarities in  each  particular  territory  in  the  ways 
of  legislation  and  its  enforcement,  so  that  Japan 
of  that  time  presented  a  most  motley  aspect  as 
regards  legal  matters,  like  France  under  the  an- 


312  History  of  Japan 

cient  regime.  The  power  of  the  daimyo  to  irrh 
pose  taxes  and  raise  contributions  was  restricted 
by  no  explicit  law,  and  therefore  had  been  exer- 
cised rather  arbitrarily.  When  in  financial  stress, 
he  could  freely  make  applications,  approaching  to 
commands,  to  some  of  his  well-to-do  subjects, 
whatever  the  cause  of  his  pecuniary  embarrass- 
ment might  be.  Besides  he  could  coin  money,  if 
its  use  were  limited  to  his  own  territory.  No  need 
to  say  that  notes  were  also  abundantly  issued  by 
his  treasurer  for  circulation  within  his  territory 
as  substitutes  for  the  legal  tender.  In  time  of 
peace  the  samurai  under  a  daimyo  served  their 
lord  in  his  territorial  government  as  civil  officials. 
They,  however,  being  warriors  by  nature,  had 
to  be  constantly  trained  in  military  arts,  with  vari- 
ous weapons,  among  which  swords  and  spears 
were  preferred  as  the  most  practical.  Archery 
had  not  been  abandoned  entirely,  and  the  bow 
and^  arrow  was  still  held  to  be  the  emblem  of  the 
noble  calling  of  warriors,  but  this  sort  of  weapon 
had  never  been  used  on  battle-fields  since  the  be- 
ginning of  the  Tokugawa  period,  so  that  the  art 
had  become  on  the  whole  ceremonial.  The  use 
of  fire-arms  introduced  at  the  end  of  the  Ashi- 
kaga  epoch  became  rapidly  general  all  over  the 
country.  Gunners  were  employed,  as  archers  for- 
merly had  been,  in  opening  a  battle,  and  then 
made  way  for  the  attack  of  the  infantry.  Shoot- 
ing was  considered  in  the  Tokugawa  period  to  be 
more  practical  than  archery,  but  as  there  was 


The  Tokugawa  Shogunate     313 

little  space  for  showing  personal  bravery  in  the 
practice  of  this  art,  it  was  not  highly  encouraged 
among  the  samurai.  Though  fighting  on  horse- 
back had  not  been  prevalent  on  the  battle-field 
since  the  middle  Ashikaga,  commanders  at  least 
continued  to  ride,  so  that  horsemanship  was  a 
requisite  art  of  the  samurai  in  the  Tokugawa  age, 
especially  among  its  higher  grades.  It  should  be 
here  well  noticed  the  jujutsu,  which  is  now  very 
celebrated  all  over  the  world  as  a  military  art 
originated  and  cultivated  by  the  Japanese,  did  not 
much  attract  the  attention  of  the  orthodox  Toku- 
gawa warriors,  for  it  was  thought  to  be  an  art 
useful  in  arresting  culprits,  and  therefore  good 
only  for  lower  samurai  or  those  below  them  in 
rank,  whq  were  generally  in  charge  of  the  police 
business  in  all  territories. 

With  such  military  accomplishments,  the  samu- 
rai of  the  period  were  to  serve  their  territorial 
master  in  time  of  war  as  leaders  and  fighters,  for 
it  was  still  the  age  in  which  all  warriors  were  ex- 
pected to  display  a  personal  bravery,  parallel  to 
their  ability  to  lead  and  command  troops,  as  in 
medieval  Europe.  As  there  had  been  neither  ex- 
ternal nor  civil  war,  however,  for  more  than  two 
centuries  since  the  semi-religious  insurrection  at 
Shimabara  in  Kyushu  was  subdued  in  the  year 
1638,  war  was  prepared  for  only  as  an  imaginary 
possibility,  and  not  as  a  probable  emergency.  The 
samurai  of  all  territories,  therefore,  though  said 
to  be  on  a  constant  war  footing,  were  not  trained 


314  History  of  Japan 

as  they  should  have  been.  We  see  indeed  the  di- 
vision of  them  into  fighting  groups  and  the  ap- 
pointment of  a  leader  for  each  group  in  times  of 
peace.  But  there  was  no  manoeuvring  nor  any 
training  of  a  like  kind  in  tactical  movements.  The 
only  military  exercise  approaching  it  was  the  hunt- 
ing of  wild  game  or  the  sham  hunting  which  ended 
in  cruelly  sacrificing  dogs,  and  even  these  sports 
were  not  practised  frequently.  That  those  pieces 
of  Japanese  armour,  which  foreigners  can  now 
see  in  many  museums  in  Europe  and  America,  had 
been  long  found  to  be  a  sort  of  thing  rather  in- 
convenient to  wear  in  this  country,  yet  had  never- 
theless continued  to  be  a  furniture  indispensable 
to  every  household  of  samurai  and  to  be  embel- 
lished with  an  exquisite  workmanship,  proves  how 
academically  war  had  been  regarded  in  those  far- 
off  days.  It  can  be  easily  gathered  from  the  above 
statement  that  the  samurai  of  the  time  were  more 
civil  functionaries  than  fighting  men.  Their  real 
status,  however,  being  warriors  and  not  civilians, 
they  were  constantly  subjected  to  martial  law. 
They  had  to  serve  their  master  always  with  all 
their  might,  holding  themselves  responsible  with 
their  lives,  as  if  they  were  on  the  battlefield  facing 
the  enemy.  Many  examples  may  be  cited  from 
the  history  of  the  age  of  samurai  suicides,  com- 
mitted on  account  of  some  misdemeanour  or  the 
mismanagement  of  the  civil  administration  con- 
fided to  him.  In  effect,  an  armed  peace  reigned 
throughout  the  Empire. 


CHAPTER  XII 

TOKUGAWA   SHOGUNATE,    CULTURE   AND   SOCIETY 

IN  the  previous  chapter  I  have  dwelt  on  the 
military  and  political  organisation  of  the  time 
of  the  Tokugawa  Shogunate  somewhat  more  fully 
than  was  appropriate  for  a  book  of  such  small 
compass  as  this.  What  was  then  the  civilisation, 
which  had  been  supported  and  sheltered  by  this 
organisation  and  regime?  That  must  be  told  sub- 
sequently. 

As  the  well-planned  military  regime  of  the  Sho- 
gunate can  be  said  to  have  been  based  on  the  as- 
sumption that  war  was  a  far-distant  possibility, 
an  imaginary  danger,  and  as  at  the  same  time  the 
Shogunate  had  watched  jealously  not  to  stir  up 
dalmyo  and  samurai  to  so  warlike  a  pitch  of  self- 
confidence  that  they  would  believe  themselves  able 
to  cope  with  the  Shogun,  there  had  lain  the  chief 
difficulty  of  sustaining  the  martial  spirit  of  the 
nation  in  full  strength,  that  is  to  say,  of  continu- 
ing the  military  regime  as  it  had  been  at  first. 
There  were  of  course  several  gradations  in  the 
intensity  of  the  fighting  spirit  of  the  people  in 
different  localities  of  the  country.  In  both  ex- 
tremities of  the  Empire,  in  the  south  of  Kyushu 

315 


316  History  of  Japan 

and  in  the  north  of  Honto,  where  civilisation  was 
rather  at  a  low  ebb,  the  martial  spirit  had  con- 
tinued not  much  abated  since  the  time  of  the  Ashi- 
kaga.  On  both  sides  of  the  boundary  of  two  such 
adjoining  territories,  a  difference  of  dialect  was 
clearly  perceivable,  and  an  acute  hostile  feeling 
against  each  other  prevailed.  People  were  not 
allowed  to  marry  their  neighbors  beyond  the  fron- 
tier, and  this  rule  was  strictly  applied  to  all  mem- 
bers of  the  warrior-class.  In  brief,  they  were 
always  staring  each  other  in  the  face,  as  if  ready 
to  fight  at  any  time.  As  to  the  greater  part  of 
the  Empire,  however,  including  the  territories 
situated  between  the  two  extremities,  that  is  to 
say,  in  those  regions  of  the  country  where  the 
people  were  more  enlightened,  no  such  animosity 
between  the  peoples  of  neighboring  daimyo  was 
to  be  noticed.  There  marriages  had  been  con- 
tracted freely  between  the  subjects  of  different 
lords,  a  relationship  which  could  only  arise  from 
the  assumption  that  most  probably  there  would 
occur  no  war  between  the  two  daimyo,  and  there 
would  be  no  fear  of  such  marriages  becoming  an 
awkward  connection.  Adjoining  territories  main- 
taining such  intimate  relations,  being  connected 
by  the  personalities  of  the  inhabitants,  should  be 
considered  not  as  quasi-independent  states  ranged 
side  by  side  and  in  dangerous  rivalry,  verging  al- 
most on  belligerency,  but  as  neighboring  govern- 
mental departments  in  the  same  well-centralised 
state.  It  may  be  gathered  from  these  data  that 


Culture  and  Society          317 

the  more  enlightened  and  by  far  the  greater  part 
of  the  Japanese  nation  were  so  peace-loving,  that 
they  organised  all  their  ways  of  living  on  the  as- 
sumption of  a  permanent  peace.  And  that  abso- 
lute peace  had  verily  continued  for  more  than 
two  centuries  in  a  country  said  to  have  been  domi- 
nated by  an  absolute  military  regime,  more  than 
testifies  how  averse  is  the  Japanese  nation  from 
wanton  warfare.  Foreigners  should  ponder  this 
irrefutable  fact  in  the  history  of  Japan,  a  fact 
which  can  not  elsewhere  be  found  in  abundance 
even  in  the  history  of  European  and  American 
states,  before  they  calumniate  our  nation  as  the 
most  bellicose  and  dangerous  in  the  world. 

Without  doubt  Japan  under  the  Tokugawa 
Shogunate  was  a  country  governed  by  a  military 
regime,  feudalistic  in  form,  but  in  truth  peace 
brooded  over  the  land,  the  utmost  peace  which 
could  be  expected  from  any  military  regime.  As 
tranquillity  had  continued  so  long,  our  civilisa- 
tion had  been  able  meanwhile  to  make  a  wonder- 
ful progress.  If  war  can  be  eulogised  with  some 
justice  to  be  a  stimulating  and  compulsive  factor 
of  civilisation,  with  no  less  certainty  peace  may 
be  complimented  as  a  factor,  the  most  efficient,  in 
fostering  the  same.  In  the  preceding  chapters  I 
have  spoken  of  the  propagation  of  culture 
throughout  the  country,  notwithstanding  its  anar- 
chical condition,  and  of  that  very  culture,  which 
was  in  the  main  humanistic.  This  humanistic  cul- 
ture had  now  its  successor  in  a  civilisation  higher 


318  History  of  Japan 

in  form  and  in  quality.  That  the  progress  was 
apparently  retarded  for  a  while  on  account  of 
wars,  which  rapidly  succeeded  one  after  another 
at  the  end  of  the  Ashikaga,  was  a  phenomenon 
that  was  on/ly  temporary.  How  could  a  few 
patches  of  straw  floating  on  the  surface  stop  the 
forward  movement  of  a  strong  undercurrent,  how- 
ever slowly  the  stream  might  run?  Mingled  with 
the  clash  and  clang  of  arms,  an  exquisite  music 
embodying  the  ever  advancing  civilisation  of  our 
country  had  been  heard;  though  at  first  very 
faintly  audible,  it  grew  louder  and  louder  till  it 
became  sonorous  enough  to  make  the  whole  na- 
tion vibrate  when  the  clamorous  battle-cry  of  the 
warriors  had  subsided.  In  short,  Japan  had  been 
steadily  advancing,  and  it  was  indeed  those  war- 
riors themselves  who  carried  the  torch  of  civilisa- 
tion farther  and  farther  onward.  Many  histor- 
ians ascribed  it  solely  to  the  individual  exertion 
of  lyeyasu,  that  learning  had  been  revived  since 
the  beginning  of  the  seventeenth  century.  Seeing, 
however,  that  those  samurai  who  fought  with  and 
under  him  had  rarely  been  noted  for  the  excellence 
of  their  literary  acquirements,  it  can  hardly  be 
supposed  that  he  had  been  deeply  interested  in 
promoting  learning  and  culture  among  his  en- 
tourage. Neither  did  he  himself  leave  any  trace 
of  his  having  received  a  higher  degree  of  liberal 
education  than  the  average  generals  of  his  times. 
It  is  too  notorious  a  fact  to  doubt  that  he  earnestly 
encouraged  learning  and  ordered  many  books  to 


Culture  and  Society          319 

be  reprinted.  Yet  it  is  also  clear  that  his  encour- 
agement was  very  efficient,  mainly  because  his  po- 
sition as  the  sole  military  and  political  master  of 
Japan  enabled  him  to  figure  as  a  patron  of  the 
arts.  The  fact  that  before  his  authority  as  a 
military  dictator  became  incontestably  established, 
the  reprint  of  various  books  had  been  going  on 
almost  without  intermission,  and  that  the  two 
Emperors  Go-Y6zei  and  Go-Midzunowo  and  also 
Kanetsugu  Naoye,  a  warrior  who  had  grown  up 
in  the  remote  province  of  Yechigo,  were  among 
the  most  ardent  patrons  of  learning  by  the  en- 
couragement they  gave  to  the  reprinting  of  stand- 
ard works,  testifies  that  lyeyasu  did  not  stand 
alone  in  encouraging  liberal  education.  After  all, 
it  should  be  fairly  said  that  the  first  Shogun  of  the 
Tokugawa  did  only  what  ought  to  have  been  done 
by  him,  or  what  the  nation  had  a  right  to  expect 
from  a  person  in  a  position  such  as  his.  In  1593, 
that  is  to  say,  five  years  before  the  death  of  Hide- 
yoshi,  the  E'mperor  Go-Y6zei  ordered  the  so- 
called  old  text  of  the  Hsiao-king  to  be  reprinted 
in  wooden  type.  This  was  the  first  book  in  our 
country  printed  with  movable  type,  so  far  as  can 
be  said  with  certainty.  As  to  the  types  them- 
selves which  the  Emperor  resorted  to  in  his  scho- 
lastic undertaking,  we  have  reason  to  suppose  that 
they  had  been  seized  in  Korea  as  a  prize  of  war 
and  brought  to  this  country  by  the  expeditionary 
troops  which  Hideyoshi  had  sent  thither  in  the 
previous  year.  Korea  had  been  looked  upon 


320  History  of  Japan 

through  the  Ashikaga  period  by  the  Japanese  as 
a  country  more  advanced  in  culture  than  Japan 
in  those  days.  We  read  in  our  history  about  the 
repeated  applications  addressed  by  the  Ashikaga 
Shogunate  to  the  Korean  government,  not  only 
for  the  donation  of  a  complete  set  of  the  Buddhist 
Tripitaka  reprinted  in  that  country,  but  also  the 
blocks  themselves  used  in  that  reprinting.  To  the 
latter  of  these  two  requests,  the  peninsular  gov- 
ernment flatly  declined  to  accede.  To  the  for- 
mer, however,  they  acquiesced  as  many  times  as 
they  could  manage,  so  that  we  see  now  here  and 
there  volumes  of  the  sutras  which  had  been  sent 
as  presents  by  the  Korean  government  before  the 
seventeenth  century.  The  method  of  printing 
with  movable  types  had  been  introduced  into  Ko- 
rea of  course  from  China,  and  types  made  of 
wood  as  well  as  of  clay  had  long  been  in  use  there. 
It  seems  to  have  been  those  wooden  types  which 
our  warriors  fetched  home,  and  the  fact  that  such 
vehicles  of  learning  had  been  taken  as  a  war- 
prize  by  these  soldiers  indicates  that  they  were 
not  totally  indifferent  to  the  cultivation  of  letters. 
In  1597,  four  years  after  the  reprinting  of  the 
afore-said  Hsiao-king,  the  same  Emperor  or- 
dered again  many  other  books  to  be  reprinted. 
Among  those  then  thus  reproduced  were  not  only 
several  books  of  Confucian  classical  literature  and 
other  Chinese  works,  literary  as  well  as  medical, 
but  some  Japanese  books,  such  as  the  first  volume 
of  the  Nihongi  and  a  work  on  Japanese  political 


Culture  and  Society          321 

institutions  written  by  Chikafusa  Kitabatake,  a 
court-noble  in  the  time  of  the  Emperor  Go-Daigo, 
who  was  noted  for  his  unwavering  fidelity  to  the 
Emperor  and  for  his  education,  being  the  author 
of  the  celebrated  history  called  Jingo-shotoki. 
Many  of  these  books  seem  to  have  been  re-issued 
within  the  same  year,  which  was  one  year  previous 
to  the  death  of  Hideyoshi,  and  the  types  used  this 
time  were  made  in  our  country  after  the  Korean 
models.  Most  probably  the  types  captured  in 
Korea  as  prizes  did  not  long  suffice  to  satiate  the 
increasing  desire  of  the  Emperor,  aroused  by  his 
deep  interest  in  books. 

The  next  step  in  the  improvement  of  Japanese 
printing  followed  the  same  course  as  it  had  in 
Europe,  that  is  to  say,  the  use  of  metallic  types. 
The  first  attempt  in  this  improved  method  was 
made  by  the  aforesaid  Kanetsugu  Naoye,  head 
of  the  vassals  of  the  house  of  Uyesugi,  who  was 
at  that  time  lord  of  Yonezawa.  The  book  which 
Naoye  ordered  to  be  reprinted  was  the  celebrated 
Chinese  literary  glossary  called  the  Wen-hsuant 
which  literally  means  selected  literary  pieces,  in 
verse  as  well  as  in  prose.  This  reprint  was  put 
into  execution  at  Fushimi  in  the  year  1606,  which 
was  the  fourth  year  of  the  Shogunate  of  lyeyasu, 
and  the  metallic  material  then  used  in  casting  the 
types  was  copper.  With  him  as  the  precursor, 
several  patrons  of  learning  followed  in  his  wake. 
Among  the  most  noted  of  them  were  lyeyasu  him- 
self and  the  Emperor  Go-Midsunowo.  This  Em- 


322  History  of  Japan 

peror,  who  was  the  son  and  successor  of  the  Em- 
peror Go-Y6zei,  imitated  his  father  in  encourag- 
ing the  reproduction  of  books  with  type,  not  of 
wood  but  of  copper  as  Naoye  had  done.  The 
book  printed  under  the  imperial  auspices  in  1621 
was  the  fifteen  volumes  of  a  Chinese  lexicon  after 
the  block  print  issued  in  China  of  the  Sung  dy- 
nasty. Prior,  however,  to  the  undertaking  of  the 
Emperor,  lyeyasu,  as  ex-Shogun,  ordered  reprints 
to  be  made  with  copper  types  at  his  residential 
town  of  Sumpu,  now  called  Shidzuoka,  in  the 
province  of  Suruga.  The  books  reprinted  there 
in  1615  and  1616  were  the  index  of  the  complete 
series  of  the  Buddhist  Tripitaka  and  the  Extracts 
from  Various  Chinese  Classics.  Besides  these,  it 
should  be  mentioned  in  his  honour  as  a  patron  of 
learning,  that  he  ordered  more  than  one  hundred 
thousand  pieces  of  wooden  types  to  be  manu- 
factured for  the  reprinting  of  various  useful 
books.  From  1599,  the  year  before  the  decisive 
battle  of  Sekigahara,  until  the  end  of  his  Shogun- 
ate,  lyeyasu's  agent  at  Fushimi  carried  on  the 
printing  of  books  with  movable  wooden  types 
without  any  cessation.  Among  the  books  re- 
printed there  were  the  Adzuma-kagami,  the  record 
of  the  earlier  Kamakura  Shogunate,  a  Chinese 
political  miscellany  written  at  the  beginning  of  the 
T'ang  dynasty,  and  some  old  Chinese  strategical 
works. 

Not   only   such   illustrious   personages    as   the 
above-mentioned  Emperors,  Shogun,  and  eminent 


Culture  and  Society  323 

warriors,  but  men  of  mediocre  means  or  of  un- 
pretentious rank,  such  as  samurai,  priests,  literati 
and  merchants,  also  vied  with  one  another  in  pub- 
lishing new  and  old  books  of  Japan  as  well  as  of 
China,  by  the  method  of  woodblocks  or  of  mova- 
ble types.  Among  wealthy  merchants  the  most 
renowned  at  that  time  as  the  Mecaenas  of  arts 
and  learning  was  Yoichi  Suminokura.  He  was 
born  of  a  rich  family  living  in  a  suburb  of  Kyoto, 
and  was  himself  an  enterprising  merchant.  More- 
over, his  accomplishments  in  the  Chinese  classics 
and  in  Japanese  versification  were  far  ahead  of 
the  average  literati  of  the  time,  and  his  skill  in 
calligraphy  has  been  said  to  be  almost  incompara- 
ble. Out  of  the  immense  fortune  which  he  had 
amassed  by  trading  with  continental  countries  as 
far  as  Tonkin  and  Cochin-China,  he  spent  great 
sums  freely  in  publishing  books,  the  greater  part 
of  which  were  works  famous  in  Japanese  litera- 
ture. It  is  said  that  more  than  twenty  sorts  of 
books  were  issued  by  him  alone,  counting  in  all 
several  hundred  volumes. 

What  most  attracts  our  attention  in  his  under- 
takings, however,  is  the  fact  that  all  of  these  books 
were  printed,  not  in  the  movable  type  then  in 
vogue,  but  in  the  wood-block  style  of  old.  The 
new  method  of  printing  with  type,  though  intro- 
duced several  years  back  and  assiduously  encour- 
aged by  many  influential  persons,  had  not  been 
able  to  demonstrate  its  advantages  to  the  full.  In 
each  edition,  whoever  might  have  been  the  pub- 


324  History  of  Japan 

lisher,  the  number  of  copies  issued  had  generally 
not  exceeded  two  hundred,  and  that  the  number 
was  so  small  shows  at  the  same  time  the  narrow- 
ness of  the  reading  circle  of  that  age.  It  proves 
also  that  Japan  was  not  yet  in  any  urgent  need 
of  seeing  books  suddenly  multiplied  by  the  busy 
use  of  movable  types.  Moreover,  many  incon- 
veniences, not  known  in  the  typography  of  the 
West,  manifested  themselves  in  the  adoption  of 
the  new  method  in  a  country  like  the  Japan  of 
that  time,  where  Chinese  ideographs  had  been 
used  almost  exclusively  as  the  necessary  vehicle 
for  expressing  thought.  We  had  to  provide  a 
great  variety  of  fonts  of  types,  each  type-face  rep- 
resenting a  special  ideograph,  so  that  a  far  larger 
and  more  varied  assortment  of  fonts  was  required 
than  in  the  case  where  an  alphabet  is  in  use,  not 
to  mention  that  the  total  number  of  types  had  to 
be  enormously  augmented  out  of  the  necessity  of 
having  numerous  multiples  of  the  same  type.  To 
print  sundry  accessories  alongside  Chinese  texts, 
in  order  to  make  them  easily  legible  for  Japanese 
students,  was  another  difficulty  which  was  found 
almost  insuperable  in  the  adoption  of  movable 
types.  The  desire  of  some  editors  to  insert  illus- 
trations could  not  also  be  fulfilled  easily,  if  the 
text  was  to  be  printed  in  type,  for  setting  the 
blocks  together  with  type  was  considered  a  very 
irksome  business  at  a  time  when  printing  in  type 
was  still  in  its  infancy.  They  would  rather  have 
preferred  the  single  use  of  wood-blocks  to  using 


Culture  and  Society  325 

them  together  with  types.  Lastly,  as  regards 
those  literary  works  by  Japanese  authors  which 
Suminokura  had  fondly  put  into  print,  that  is  to 
say,  in  cases  where  the  editor's  chief  care  was  the 
reproduction  in  facsimile  of  the  manuscript  origi- 
nally executed  in  fine  calligraphic  style,  movable 
types  entirely  failed  to  serve  the  purpose.  All 
these  disadvantages  conspired  indeed  to  frustrate 
the  development  of  the  printing  in  type,  so  that 
the  new  method  was  set  aside  soon  after  its  in- 
troduction until  the  end  of  the  Shogunate.  It  is 
certain,  however,  that  the  introduction  of  the  use 
of  types  in  printing,  though  to  a  very  limited  ex- 
tent, contributed  none  the  less  to  the  general  pro- 
gress of  civilisation  in  Japan,  in  multiplying  books 
and  in  stimulating  the  thirst  for  knowledge  on 
the  part  of  the  general  public. 

There  is  no  doubt  whatever  that,  in  the  number 
of  books  published  in  Japan,  the  beginning  of  the 
seventeenth  century  far  surpassed  the  end  of  the 
sixteenth.  Bookstores,  where  books  were  sold, 
bought,  edited,  and  published,  were  now  to  be 
found  in  Kyoto  and  Yedo,  and  their  business  be- 
came lucrative  enough  to  be  continued  as  an  in- 
dependent calling.  Here  the  question  must  nat- 
urally arise,  how  were  those  multiplied  books  dis- 
tributed? There  were,  besides  the  priests,  espe- 
cially those  belonging  to  the  Zen  sect,  not  a  few 
professional  literati,  who  pursued  learning  as  their 
chief  business.  Secretaries  in  the  chancellories 
of  the  Shogun  and  of  various  daimyo  had  been 


326  History  of  Japan 

generally  recruited  from  that  class.  Their  num- 
ber, however,  had  remained  comparatively  insig- 
nificant for  a  long  time  during  the  earlier  part  of 
the  Shogunate,  and  they  had  been  classified  rather 
into  an  exclusive  society,  which  included  physicians 
and  Buddhist  priests.  They  had  been  treated  as 
servants  engaged  in  reading  and  writing,  and  not 
respected  as  advisers  nor  revered  as  leaders  of  the 
spirit  of  the  age.  However  noble  might  be  the 
profession  in  which  they  were  engaged,  still  they 
were  mere  professional  men,  considered  good  to 
serve  and  not  apt  to  lead.  The  increase  in  num- 
ber of  such  men  of  letters,  it  is  true,  was  the 
cause  and  the  effect  of  the  rise  of  the  cultural 
level  of  the  country,  for  it  clearly  denoted  that 
Japan  had  begun  to  appreciate  learning  more 
highly  than  before  and  hence  to  demand  more  of 
these  learned  men.  But  that  increase  must  have 
naturally  stopped  short,  unless  the  learning  which 
they  taught  was  imbibed  by  the  people  at  large 
and  made  itself  a  necessary  ingredient  of  the  na- 
tional life,  that  is  to  say,  unless  the  general  pub- 
lic had  gained  thereby  more  of  enlightenment. 

For  such  a  continual  progress  Japan  was  quite 
ready.  Within  half  a  century,  our  country  had 
been  transformed  from  an  anarchical  country  of 
interminable  wars  to  a  peaceful  land,  a  land  which 
was  non-militaristic  to  the  utmost,  though  under 
one  of  the  most  elaborate  military  regimes.  That 
it  had  been  "shut  up"  against  foreign  intercourse 
was,  in  its  main  motive,  not  to  ward  off  the  in- 


Culture  and  Society  327 

filtration  of  Western  civilisation  in  general,  but 
only  to  achieve  a  peaceful  national  progress  un- 
disturbed by  any  intervention  of  scheming  foreign 
missionaries.  The  Shogun,  who  ought  to  have 
continued  as  a  military  dictator,  had  been  turned 
into  a  potentate  who  cared  the  least  for  military 
matters,  though  here  lurked  the  danger  of  losing 
his  raison  d'etre  against  the  Emperor  at  Kyoto. 
The  "wisest  fool"  in  Japan  was  Tsunayoshi,  the 
fifth  Shogun  of  the  Tokugawa,  who  not  only 
founded  a  college  and  a  shrine  for  the  spirit  of 
Confucius  at  Yushima  in  Yedo,  the  site  where 
now  the  Educational  Museum  stands,  but  was 
very  fond  of  playing  the  savant,  and  himself  de- 
livered lectures  commenting  on  Confucian  texts 
before  the  assembled  dalmyo  in  duty  bound  to 
listen  to  him.  With  a  Shogun  like  him  at  the 
head  of  the  government,  it  should  by  no  means 
be  wondered  at  that  the  cultivation  of  Chinese 
literature,  which  formed  the  greater  part  of  the 
learning  of  the  time,  came  into  vogue  among  all 
of  those  belonging  to  the  military  regime,  the 
daimyo  and  the  samurai  of  various  sorts  and 
grades.  Moreover,  the  samurai  of  the  age  them- 
selves, though  they  professed  to  be  warriors  as 
ever  in  their  essential  character,  and  their  train- 
ing in  military  exercises  had  never  really  signifi- 
cantly relaxed,  had  ceased  to  be  fighting  men  by 
profession  as  of  yore,  on  account  of  the  long- 
continued  tranquillity.  Notwithstanding  the  fact 
that  the  reason  they  had  been  honoured  and  re- 


328  History  of  Japan 

spected  by  the  common  people  was  mainly  because 
they  were  serving  the  country  through  their  mas- 
ter, the  daimyo,  at  the  possible  hazard  of  their 
lives,  they  had  been  obliged  gradually  not  to  rely 
on  their  martial  valour  only,  but  to  mould  their 
character  and  improve  their  ability,  so  as  to  befit 
themselves  to  become  capable  officials,  administra- 
tors, nay,  even  statesmen  in  their  own  territory 
and  well-bred  gentlemen  in  private  life,  so  as  to 
furnish  models  to  the  common  people  by  their 
personal  examples.  As  they  had  read  Chinese 
works  mainly  for  this  purpose,  the  kinds  of  books 
read  were  naturally  limited,  the  most  preferred 
being  those  pertaining  to  morals  and  politics,  that 
is  to  say,  Confucian  literature  and  the  histories 
of  various  Chinese  dynasties,  all  of  which  were 
pragmatic  enough.  Their  literary  culture,  there- 
fore, tended  to  become  rigid,  narrow,  and  utili- 
tarian, though  very  serious  in  intention.  At  first 
sight  it  must  seem  a  very  paradoxical  matter  that 
the  learning  which  had  been  essentially  humanis- 
tic in  the  Ashikaga  period  should  have  taken  so 
utilitarian  a  tendency  in  the  age  directly  following 
it.  If  we,  however,  once  think  of  the  Italian  Ren- 
aissance metamorphosed  into  the  German  Refor- 
mation, when  it  got  northward  over  the  Alps,  we 
need  not  be  much  embarrassed  to  understand  the 
seemingly  abrupt  transition  in  our  country. 

It  should  also  be  noted  that  utilitarian  studies 
had  not  formed  the  whole  of  the  literary  culture 
of  the  Tokugawa  age.  Since  the  very  beginning 


Culture  and  Society  329 

of  the  Shogunate  down  to  its  fall  the  humanistic 
studies  handed  down  by  the  preceding  age  had 
never  been  entirely  swept  away  from  the  land.  The 
utilitarian  studies  above  cited  had  been  almost 
exclusively  pursued  by  those  samurai  standing  di- 
rectly under  the  Shogun  or  under  the  powerful 
dalmyo  whose  territories  were  big  enough  to  be 
administered  as  quasi-independent  states,  and 
whose  governments  were  on  such  a  scale  as  to 
need  high  statesmanship  in  order  to  be  well  man- 
aged. In  other  words,  those  who  had  devoted 
themselves  to  the  study  of  the  serious  sorts  of 
literature  had  been  generally  men  to  whom  some 
opportunities  might  have  been  given  for  allowing 
them  to  put  into  practice  what  they  had  learned 
from  books.  If  these  larger  territories  were  to 
be  compared  with  Prussia  and  other  kingdoms 
and  middle  states  in  the  German  Confederation, 
the  small  states  in  the  same  political  body  would 
make  good  counterparts  of  the  petty  territories 
of  minor  dalmyo  in  Japan.  As  to  those  samurai 
serving  the  minor  dainty o}  it  had  been  difficult  to 
make  them  interested  in  the  perusal  of  Chinese 
political  works,  for  their  sphere  of  action  was 
not  wide  enough  to  require  the  territorial  affairs 
being  conducted  according  to  high  and  delicate 
policies  emanating  from  a  profound  political  prin- 
ciple. In  this  respect  they  had  much  in  common 
with  their  colleagues  residing  in  the  domains  di- 
rectly belonging  to  the  Shogunate.  As  the  gov- 
ernor-in-chief  and  his  principal  assistants  in  each 


330  History  of  Japan 

domain  had  not  been  taken  from  the  residents 
of  each  district,  but  despatched  thither  from  Yedo, 
the  samurai  attached  to  the  locality  were  merely 
employed  to  serve  the  government  of  their  own 
district  as  low-class  officials,  so  that  they  had 
little  or  no  hand  even  in  local  politics.  Some  of 
these  samurai  were  landed  proprietors,  who,  be- 
ing rich  and  having  little  serious  business  to  de- 
mand their  attention,  had  ample  means  and  time 
to  dip  into  books,  which  could  hardly  have  been 
of  the  kind  causing  self-constraint,  for  their  first 
motive  in  reading  was  only  for  the  sake  of  dis- 
traction. The  landed  gentry,  under  the  samurai 
in  rank,  though  wealthier,  and  generally  in  charge 
of  village  affairs  and  in  control  of  lesser  farmers 
and  peasants,  were  also  found  numerously  in  the 
domains.  They  too  were  the  sort  of  people  to 
be  classified  in  the  same  catagory  as  the  samurai 
of  the  domains.  The  samurai  and  gentry  gath- 
ered in  and  around  second-rate  towns  in  large 
territories  belonging  to  powerful  daimyo  may  be 
included  also  in  the  same  group.  It  may  be,  how- 
ever, premature  to  suppose  that  only  books  be- 
longing to  light  literature  were  welcomed  by  those 
who  resided  in  districts  where  the  military  re- 
gime had  the  least  hold.  Serious  works,  such  as 
ethical  treatises,  for  instance,  which  abound  in 
Chinese  literature,  were  also  read  there,  but  rather 
for  the  purpose  of  occupying  themselves  with 
metaphysical  speculations  about  moral  questions, 
than  in  order  to  regulate  their  own  conduct,  pri- 


Culture  and  Society          331 

vate  or  public,  according  to  the  principles  taught 
in  them.  In  short,  their  thirst  for  knowledge  was 
purely  for  the  sake  of  enjoying  an  intellectual 
pleasure  thereby,  and  therefore  had  been  quite 
humanistic.  It  was  here  that  the  true  inheritors 
of  the  culture  of  the  later  Ashikaga  were  to  be 
sought,  and  not  in  places  where  the  influence  of 
the  regular  samurai  was  paramount.  Needless 
to  say,  the  centre  of  this  humanistic  culture  was 
Kyoto,  whose  signifiance  as  the  political  capital 
had  already  been  lost,  while  Yedo  represented  at 
its  best  the  culture  of  the  samurai.  The  Chinese 
books  preferred  by  these  humanistic  dillettanti 
were  those  pertaining  to  rhetoric  and  poetry. 
They  were  greatly  addicted  to  practising  these 
branches  of  literature.  Art  for  art's  sake  also 
found  a  better  patron  among  such  people  than 
in  the  courts  of  the  Shogun  and  of  influential 
dalmyo,  where  art  had  rather  an  applied  mean- 
ing, represented  in  ornamental  things  such  as 
screen  and  wall  paintings  down  to  the  miniature- 
art  of  the  tsuba  and  the  netsuke.  Wandering 
poets,  rhetoricians,  calligraphers,  and  artists  of 
various  crafts  were  wont  to  be  far  better  har- 
boured in  districts  where  the  humanistic  culture 
prevailed,  than  in  Yedo  or  in  the  residential  towns 
of  powerful  daimyo,  where  politics  and  discipline 
were  all-important.  The  most  significant  differ- 
ence between  the  two  sorts  of  culture  was  mani- 
fested in  a  special  branch  of  art,  that  of  painting. 
In  the  military  circles,  the  painting  of  the  Kano 


332  History  of  Japan 

school  was  preferred,  which  was  rather  rigid  in 
style  and  had  some  tincture  of  the  taste  highly 
prized  by  the  Zen-sect  priests.  On  the  other  hand, 
what  was  in  vogue  among  the  non-military  circles 
was  the  so-called  "Bunjin-gwa,"  or  paintings  of 
the  school  of  "literati-painters,"  which  were  intro- 
duced at  the  beginning  of  the  Tokugawa  period 
from  China,  and  were  characterised  by  the  mel- 
lowness of  tone  prevailing  in  them  and  also  by  a 
lack  of  the  professional  flavour. 

Besides  these  two  distinct  cultural  circles,  there 
arose  a  third  group  of  people,  who  entered  the 
cultured  arena  in  the  latter  half  of  the  seven- 
teenth century.  I  mean  the  bourgeois  class  in 
several  large  cities.  After  the  decline  of  the  trade 
of  the  historic  city  of  Sakai,  brought  about  by 
the  hard  blow  struck  at  the  root  of  the  political 
power  of  her  haughty  merchants  by  Nobunaga, 
and  caused  also  by  the  growth  of  a  rival  in  the 
great  commercial  city  of  Osaka  founded  by  Hide- 
yoshi  quite  near  it,  the  refined  humanistic  culture 
cherished  by  the  citizens  of  Sakai  vanished  with 
its  prosperity.  After  that,  it  took  a  considerable 
while  to  witness  the  revival  of  the  cultural  influ- 
ence of  the  bourgeois  class  in  Japan.  The  tran- 
quillity, however,  which  the  Tokugawa  Shogunate 
had  brought  on  our  country,  did  not  fail  to  cause 
such  a  revival,  though  not  again  in  Sakai,  yet  at 
least  in  the  two  greatest  commercial  centres  of 
the  empire.  The  one  was  Yedo  on  the  east,  and 
the  other  Osaka  on  the  west.  Of  these  two  cities., 


Culture  and  Society  333 

in  affluence  Osaka,  on  account  of  its  geographical 
advantages,  was  several  steps  ahead  of  Yedo. 
Not  only  was  it  near  Kyoto,  the  centre  of  the  hu- 
manistic culture  as  ever,  but  its  remoteness  from 
Yedo  had  induced  its  merchants  to  become  more 
independent  than  those  in  the  Shogun's  own  city 
of  the  influence  of  the  strong  military  regime. 
The  culture  fostered  in  the  city,  therefore,  was 
nearer  to  that  of  the  non-military  circles  than  that 
of  Yedo.  Nay,  Osaka  went  still  further,  even 
by  a  great  many  steps,  than  Yedo.  It  was  here 
that  Monzayemon  Chikamatsu,  the  first  and  the 
greatest  dramatist  Japan  has  ever  produced,  dem- 
onstrated his  peerless  talent  at  the  end  of  the 
seventeenth  century,  and  here  was  also  one  of 
the  cradles  of  the  modern  Japanese  theatre. 
Yedo,  however,  could  not  remain  long  alien  to 
this  fresh  cultural  current  initiated  in  Kyoto  and 
Osaka.  On  account  of  its  growing  prosperity 
brought  on  by  the  constant  comings  in  and  out  of 
hundreds  of  daimyo  and  their  numerous  retinues, 
the  newly  started  political  capital  was  soon  en- 
abled to  rival  the  senior  city  of  Osaka  in  the  liveli- 
ness of  its  urban  social  life,  and  in  some  respects 
surpassed  that  of  Kyoto.  The  plutocrats  of  Osaka 
had  also  a  very  close  relation  with  the  military  re- 
gime. This  relation,  however,  consisted  in  lend- 
ing large  sums  of  money  to  various  daimyo,  many 
of  whom  had  their  warehouses  there  to  deposit 
therein  the  produce  of  their  territory,  used  as 
pledges  for  getting  advances  of  money  from  those 


334  History  of  Japan 

merchants,  and  on  that  account  their  pay-masters 
with  their  staffs  were  stationed  there  to  enable 
them  to  transact  the  customary  financial  business. 
On  the  other  hand,  the  merchants  of  Yedo  gener- 
ally profited  by  providing,  as  purveyors  and  con- 
tractors, necessary  commodities  to  the  Shogunate 
and  to  the  daimyo,  and  therefore  depended  more 
closely  on  the  military  regime,  though  some  of 
them  also  advanced  money  as  did  the  merchants  of 
Osaka.  It  is  said  that  the  richest  bourgeois  of 
Yedo,  who  had  amassed  immense  sums  of  money  at 
the  beginning  of  the  nineteenth  century  were  those 
who  had  advanced  their  moneys  at  a  very  high 
rate  of  interest  to  a  great  many  needy  hatamoto, 
who  were  obliged  to  garnishee  to  those  merchants 
their  allowances  in  rice  from  the  Shogunate  at 
fixed  intervals,  in  order  to  steer  securely  through 
stretches  of  low  water  or  through  the  straits  of 
Hard-Times  in  their  household  economy.  On  the 
whole,  however,  we  see  a  great  difference  in  that 
the  merchants  of  Yedo  were  the  patronised  party 
in  their  relations  with  the  warrior-class,  while 
those  of  Osaka  were  mostly  creditors  and  the 
military  men  their  debtors.  But  whatever  might 
have  been  their  difference  in  general  character 
from  the  merchants  of  Osaka,  the  commercial 
aristocrats  of  Yedo,  induced  by  their  opulence  to 
live  a  leisurely  and  very  luxurious  life,  could  not 
fail  to  become  gradually  patrons  of  the  bourgeois 
arts  and  literature,  merely  tinged  by  a  little  more 
of  the  martial  element  than  those  of  Osaka. 


Culture  and  Society          335 

Three  cultural  currents  thus  ran  parallel  to  one 
another  in  the  history  of  the  modern  civilisation 
of  our  country,  that  of  the  orthodox  samurai  with 
its  centre  in  Yedo,  that  of  court-nobles  and  county- 
gentry  flowing  from  Kyoto  as  its  source,  and 
lastly  that  of  the  commercial  class  with  its  strong- 
hold in  Osaka.  If  these  three  currents  had  re- 
mained irrelative  to  one  another  to  the  last;  if, 
in  other  words,  they  had  continued  for  long  to 
belong  specially  to  one  of  the  three  distinct  and 
exclusive  groups  of  the  nation,  then  the  historic 
revolution  of  the  Meidji  era  would  not  have  been 
effected,  and  Japan  might  be  in  a  state  but  half 
medieval  and  half  modern.  Fortunately,  class 
distinction  in  our  country  was  not,  at  that  time, 
so  rigid  as  to  hamper  absolutely  the  amalgama- 
tion of  different  classes,  and  a  certain  type  of 
culture,  which  had  for  a  time  been  but  a  speciality 
of  one  particular  class,  soon  ceased  to  be  so,  and 
was  extended  to  the  other  classes,  and  the  process 
necessarily  led  to  the  fusion  of  all  the  cultures  of 
different  types.  As  one  of  the  causes  which  has- 
tened such  an  amalgamation  must  be  mentioned 
the  intermarriage  of  people  of  different  classes. 

At  the  time  when  Chinese  legislation  was  first 
implanted  in  Japanese  soil,  there  were  still  minute 
restrictions  concerning  interclass-marriages  in  the 
Statutes  of  the  Taiho.  Though  mesalliances 
were  not  forbidden  by  any  explicit  law,  the  off- 
spring of  such  marriages  between  freemen  and 
slaves  were  to  follow  in  class  the  parent  of  infe- 


336  History  of  Japan 

rior  rank.  It  is  evident,  therefore,  that  such  an 
alliance  was  stigmatised  and  severely  checked. 
As  to  the  intermarriages  between  different  classes 
of  freemen,  there  had  been  no  such  restraint,  even 
with  respect  to  the  status  of  their  children.  That 
the  custom,  however,  of  choosing  the  empress 
from  members  of  the  Imperial  family  only,  to  the 
exclusion  of  all  vassal  families,  became  gradually 
confirmed,  and  that  the  same  custom  continued  in- 
tact until  the  beginning  of  the  eighth  century, 
shows  how  such  mesalliances  had  been  discour- 
aged in  the  ancient  days  of  our  history.  The 
crowning  of  a  daughter  of  the  Fujiwara  as  the 
consort  of  the  Emperor  Shomu  was  the  first  viola- 
tion of  the  long-kept  traditional  usage  regarding 
the  Imperial  marriage;  and  since  that  time  mar- 
riages had  become  very  irregular,  not  only  among 
the  members  of  the  Imperial  family,  but  also 
among  the  courtiers.  The  social  status  of  a  father 
was  considered  sufficient  by  itself  to  determine 
that  of  his  children.  No  legal  scrutiny  was 
thought  necessary  as  to  what  kind  of  a  woman 
their  mother  was,  though  it  was  self-evident  that 
the  higher  the  social  position  of  the  family  from 
which  she  sprang,  the  more  the  children  she  gave 
birth  to  would  be  honoured.  The  establishment 
of  the  military  regime  could  effect  but  very  slight 
change  in  this  domain  of  social  usage,  until  the  be- 
ginning of  the  Tokugawa  Shogunate.  It  must  be 
attributed  to  this  neglect  of  the  maternal  lineage 
in  the  consideration  of  pedigrees,  that  in  the 


Culture  and  Society          337 

most  genealogical  records  of  Japan  the  names  of 
wives,  mothers,  and  daughters  are  generally 
omitted,  notwithstanding  that  we  are  able  to 
trace  the  names  of  the  male  ancestors,  sometimes 
for  more  than  ten  centuries  backward  with  toler- 
able certainty  and  exactitude. 

The  establishment  of  the  Shogunate  by  the  To- 
kugawa  could  not  affect  to  any  great  extent  the 
social  position  of  women  in  general,  for  in  that 
domain  radical  alterations  were  not  to  be  expected 
from  the  age  in  which  militarism  was  all-powerful. 
There  was  one  thing,  however,  which  was  worthy 
of  special  notice,  concerning  the  new  usage  of 
marriage  among  the  daimyo.  As  to  the  right  of 
inheriting  their  territories,  the  preference,  it  is 
true,  had  been  on  the  side  of  the  offspring  of  a 
legal  marriage,  for  it  could  not  have  been  other- 
wise in  a  society  in  which  the  right  of  primo- 
geniture had  been  just  established  for  the  sake 
of  maintaining  the  order  intact.  Yet  there  ex- 
isted no  rigorous  rule  through  the  whole  history 
of  the  Shogunate,  which  might  be  said  to  have 
aimed  at  discouraging  mesalliances,  and  the  na- 
tural sons  of  the  daimyo  were  by  no  means  de- 
prived of  their  right  of  inheritance  on  account  of 
the  mean  origin  of  their  mother.  The  Shogunate, 
however,  interfered  in  the  marriages  of  the  dai- 
myo, and  all  of  them  were  obliged  to  take  unto 
themselves  consorts  from  families  of  equal  rank, 
that  is  to  say,  the  legal  wife  of  a  daimyo  had  to 
be  a  daughter  or  sister  of  another  diamyo,  one  of 


338  History  of  Japan 

his  equals.  Some  of  the  higher  daimyo,  especially 
those  of  the  blood  of  Tokugawa,  often  married 
daughters  of  court-nobles,  for  the  purpose  of 
keeping  the  latter  in  close  relation  with  the  Sho- 
gunate.  In  the  military  peerage  list  of  the  time 
the  wife  of  every  ruling  daimyo  had  her  place 
together  with  the  heir,  alongside  of  her  husband, 
though  even  in  this  case  her  name  used  to  be 
omitted,  while  that  of  the  heir  was  given.  In 
spite  of  the  fact,  therefore,  that  the  intermarriage 
of  the  people  of  different  territories  had  often 
been  prohibited  by  territorial  laws,  those  daimyo 
themselves  who  were  desirous  of  enforcing  those 
laws  were  obliged  to  find  their  legal  wives  out- 
side of  their  territory,  in  other  words,  to  contract 
an  interterritorial  marriage.  Such  a  marriage 
within  the  circle  of  the  daimyo  had  of  course  very 
little  to  do  with  the  territorial  politics  of  the 
daimyo  concerned,  for  most  of  the  ladies  chosen 
as  brides  were  those  who  had  been  brought  up  in 
their  father's  residence  at  Yedo,  and  after  their 
marriage  they  had  to  remain  in  the  same  city  as 
hostages  to  the  Shogunate,  and  not  allowed  to 
leave  it  for  their  territory.  Moreover,  as  the 
marriage  of  the  daimyo  received  the  close  super- 
vision of  the  Shogunate,  they  could  have  borne 
very  little,  if  any,  political  meaning  of  a  sort 
which  might  be  attached  to  the  intermarriages  of 
different  royal  families  in  Europe.  Culturally 
speaking,  however,  such  a  marriage  had  the  effect 
of  levelling  the  ways  of  living  of  various  diamyof 


Culture  and  Society          339 

and  making  them  similar  to  one  another.  The 
bride  was  usually  accompanied  into  her  husband's 
family  by  maids,  the  daughters  of  her  father's 
vassals,  and  she  was  often  escorted  by  a  few 
samurai.  These  samurai  as  well  as  the  maids 
often  took  service  under  the  daimyo,  the  husband 
of  the  bride,  and  remained  in  the  train  of  their 
lord,  after  the  death  of  the  lady  whom  they  had 
to  serve  personally.  The  number  of  the  samurai 
who  changed  masters  in  this  manner,  was  not 
naturally  large,  but  they  contributed  none  the  less 
toward  the  diminishing  of  the  differences  in  the 
social  life  of  the  various  territories. 

Generally,  however,  it  was  found  very  difficult 
for  any  samurai  to  leave  his  master  for  the  pur- 
pose of  enlisting  in  the  service  of  some  other 
daimyo.  As  the  samurai  had  been  bound  to  their 
lord  the  daimyo,  not  only  publicly  as  his  officials 
and  warriors,  but  privately  as  his  domestics,  they 
were  not  allowed  to  emigrate  freely  from  their 
lord's  territory.  Nevertheless,  the  legal  status  of 
the  samurai  versus  the  daimyo  had  never  been  the 
relation  of  slave  and  master.  No  daimyo  had 
absolute  control  over  the  person  of  his  samurai, 
in  other  words,  his  sway  was  far  from  what  might 
have  been  called  full  proprietorship.  Against  in- 
justice on  the  part  of  a  daimyo,  his  samurai  had 
the  actual  right  of  appealing  to  the  Shogunate  at 
the  risk  of  suffering  a  heavy  penalty  for  his  af- 
fronting his  lord  by  so  doing.  It  was  also  pos- 
sible to  alienate  himself  from  the  service  of  his 


340  History  of  Japan 

master  by  giving  sufficient  reasons  for  it.  If 
he  had  no  reason  to  do  so,  then  he  could  abscond, 
and  the  extradition  of  such  a  deserter  was  hardly 
ever  rigorously  pressed.  And  if  such  a  vagrant 
samurai  or  ronin  was  found  to  be  a  capable  war- 
rior or  a  man  of  talent  in  some  other  line,  he 
could  find  a  position  very  easily  under  the  daimyo 
of  his  adopted  territory.  In  such  and  like  ways 
the  samurai  of  the  Tokugawa  period  made  inter- 
territorial  migration  more  freely  than  we  imagine. 
If,  concluding  from  the  limited  sphere  of  free- 
dom of  the  samurai  in  regard  to  change  of  domi- 
cile, one  should  suppose  that  farmers,  merchants, 
and  craftsmen  were  much  more  restricted  in  their 
moving  about  inter-territorially,  he  would  be 
grossly  deceived.  The  samurai  was  de  facto 
linked  almost  inseparably  to  their  lord  the  dai- 
myo, for  the  link  had  been  firmly  cemented, 
though  not  by  any  formal  oath  of  fealty  uttered 
by  the  samurai,  as  was  the  custom  in  European 
countries,  but  by  the  hereditary  relation  between 
his  family  and  that  of  his  master.  It  became  es- 
pecially so  when  profound  peace  settled  on  Japan 
during  the  middle  of  the  Tokugawa  period,  and 
if  any  daimyo  had  given  his  samurai  the  freest 
choice  to  leave  his  territory,  very  few  of  them 
would  have  availed  themselves  of  their  freedom, 
for  by  doing  so  they  would  have  had  to  part  with 
a  great  many  things  which  they  had  long  cherished 
in  their  hearts.  On  the  whole,  the  samurai  were 
attached  to  their  daimyo  and  not  to  the  soil  on 


Culture  and  Society          341 

which  they  had  settled,  so  that  when  their  master 
was  removed  to  some  new  territory  by  the  order 
of  the  Shogunate,  most  of  the  samurai  used  to 
follow  their  lord  and  serve  him  in  the  new  lo- 
cality. The  dialectic  peculiarities,  which  have 
been  vanishing  in  Japan  very  rapidly  these  years, 
show  still  a  trace  of  these  samurai  migrations.  If 
any  foreigner  should  remark  a  considerable  dif- 
ference in  dialect  between  some  provincial  town 
and  its  suburbs,  it  shows  that  the  family  of  the 
daimyo  who  was  the  last  to  lord  it  over  the  ter- 
ritory, was  one  transplanted  there  together  with 
the  attendant  train  of  samurai  by  order  of  the 
Shogunate  in  a  time  not  so  very  remote. 

Quite  contrary  to  samurai  usage,  those  people 
below  them  in  rank  held  with  the  daimyo  of  the 
territory  in  which  they  lived  a  relationship  which 
was  purely  public  in  character.  Socially  they  were 
treated  as  men  beneath  the  samurai,  and  they 
themselves  were  content  to  be  treated  as  such. 
As  a  class,  however,  they  had  no  personal  rela- 
tions with  the  daimyo,  unless  through  the  samurai, 
to  whom  the  unsufruct  of  the  land  which  they 
cultivated  had  been  allotted  by  the  daimyo.  In 
other  words,  their  duty  to  their  territorial  lord 
was  nothing  but  that  which  they  owed  as  a  people 
governed  to  a  governor  who  chanced  to  rule  he- 
reditarily over  the  territory,  but  might  at  any  time 
be  displaced  by  somebody  else  at  the  pleasure  of 
the  Shogunate.  Fidelity  on  their  part  to  the 
daimyo,  therefore,  was  no  personal  obligation, 


342  History  of  Japan 

nor  the  result  of  a  reciprocal  contract,  but  only 
a  product  of  a  long  history,  if  any  example  of 
such  virtue  were  exhibited.  They  had  no  need 
to  follow  their  daimyo  as  his  samurai  used  to  do, 
whithersover  he  might  be  transferred.  On  the 
contrary,  all  of  them  remained  as  a  rule  in  the 
old  territory,  in  which  they  continued  for  long 
years  to  pursue  their  business,  and  welcomed  the 
newly-appointed  daimyo.  In  this  respect  they 
might  be  said  to  have  been  much  more  fixed  to 
the  territory  than  the  samurai.  At  the  same  time, 
as  their  relations  with  the  daimyo  were  not  very 
close,  their  movements  were  not  so  vigilantly 
watched  as  those  of  the  samurai,  and  during  the 
Tokugawa  period,  there  went  on  incessant  goings 
and  comings  of  the  lower  order  in  and  out  of  va- 
rious territories,  though  very  insignificant  in  char- 
acter and  therefore  apparently  unnoticed.  Sum- 
marily speaking,  the  boundary  of  the  territories 
of  the  daimyo  was  of  no  practical  value  in  re- 
stricting the  population  within  its  geographical 
pale,  in  spite  of  the  fact  that  all  daimyo,  with- 
out exception,  exercised  their  right  of  scrutinising 
the  ingress  and  egress  of  travellers  at  certain 
fixed  barriers  on  the  boundary  line.  Viewed  from 
the  standpoint  of  the  internal  migration  of  people 
of  all  classes,  Japan  was  far  from  being  an  ag- 
glomeration of  isolated  territories.  No  wonder 
that  the  contemporary  culture,  springing  up  from 
whichever  of  the  three  possible  sources,  could  not 
remain  secluded  within  the  confines  of  particular 


Culture  and  Society          343 

localities,  but  gradually  permeated  the  country  in 
every  direction,  and  became  one. 

Not  only  inter-territorially,  but  also  in  each 
of  the  territories  themselves,  no  sort  of  culture 
could  hold  itself  for  long  as  the  exclusive  prop- 
erty of  a  certain  class.  In  our  history,  it  is  true, 
we  had  retained  a  class-system  for  a  very  long 
time,  even  after  the  revolution  of  the  Meidji  era, 
and  all  men  had  not  been  equal  before  the  law  un- 
til very  recent  times.  Nay,  to  this  day  we  see 
still  some  harmless  relics  of  that  system  in  certain 
regulations  preferential  to  the  aristocracy.  Re- 
garded as  a  whole,  however,  the  class-system  in 
Japan  has  never  approached  the  caste-system  of 
some  other  countries.  If  there  had  been  anything 
like  that  in  our  country,  it  was  the  distinction  of 
the  ordinary  people,  or  we  might  say,  people  of 
the  Japanese  pur  sang,  from  those  whose  blood 
was  thought  to  be  polluted.  Marriage  with  the 
latter  set  of  people  had  been  scrupulously  avoided 
on  the  part  of  the  former.  This  antipathy  en- 
tertained by  the  majority  of  the  nation  against 
the  minority  was  nearly  of  the  same  nature  as 
the  anti-Semitic  feeling  in  Europe.  The  coinci- 
dence between  the  two  went  so  far  that  in  Japan 
tanners,  executioners,  and  so  forth  were  considered 
as  men  of  occupations  exclusive  to  the  people  of 
polluted  blood,  just  as  similar  trades  in  Europe 
had  been  relegated  to  the  Jews  of  the  Middle 
Ages.  From  the  fact  that  in  the  newly  explored 
part  of  the  empire,  such  as  the  northern  part  of 


344  History  of  Japan 

Honto,  the  settlements  of  the  so-called  people 
of  polluted  blood  are  very  few,  and  therefore  the 
feeling  against  them  there  is  not  so  acute  as  it  is 
in  the  central  or  most  historic  part  of  the  em- 
pire, we  may  safely  conclude  that  such  a  feeling 
had  its  origin  in  some  racial  difference  and  dates 
from  the  immemorial  past.  It  is  very  strange  that 
in  Japan,  where  the  population  is  unquestionably 
of  mixed  blood,  such  an  antipathy  against  a  cer- 
tain set  of  people  should  have  continued  stub- 
bornly even  to  the  present  day.  On  the  other 
hand,  we  have  sufficient  grounds  for  believing  that, 
in  the  course  of  our  history,  not  a  few  people  of 
the  pure  blood  have  been  classed  with  the  impure 
on  account  of  some  criminal  action,  or  they 
mingled  with  the  latter  from  some  predilection, 
out  of  their  own  free  will. 

As  to  the  people  who  were  not  stigmatised  as 
impure  of  blood,  it  is  very  difficult  to  draw  a 
boundary  line  distinct  enough  to  divide  them 
clearly  according  to  their  blood  relationship. 
During  the  anarchical  period  of  our  history  from 
the  later  Ashikaga  to  the  beginning  of  the  Toku- 
gawa  Shogunate,  there  took  place  a  violent  con- 
vulsion of  the  social  strata,  as  the  result  of  the 
disorder  which  reigned  everywhere.  Many 
talented  plebeians  had  lucky  chances  to  enlist  as 
samurai  in  the  service  of  some  daimyo,  while 
many  of  the  scions  of  noted  warrior  families 
transformed  themselves  into  plebeians,  from  dis- 
gust at  their  calling  of  men-slaughterers  or  from 


Culture  and  Society          345 

disappointment  in  their  ambitions  as  warriors. 
In  the  time  which  followed,  that  is  to  say,  when 
social  order  was  reetablished,  such  a  transmuta- 
tion became  exceedingly  difficult,  as  might  be  sup- 
posed. Yet  even  since  then  it  is  not  altogether 
a  matter  of  sheer  impossibility.  Plebeians  of 
rare  merit,  especially  those  who  were  skilled  in 
certain  branches  of  art  and  learning,  were  able  to 
find  their  way  upward  without  much  difficulty. 
The  word  "samurai"  which  had  meant  a  "warrior 
attending"  came  to  denote  a  social  rank  above  the 
plebeians,  so  that  it  could  include  those  who  pur- 
sued a  profession  which  was  far  from  being  mili- 
taristic, such  as  men  of  letters,  physicians,  paint- 
ers, wo-dancers  and  the  like  in  the  retinue  of  the 
daimyo.  Many  territorial  bourgeois,  too,  trans- 
formed themselves  into  samurai  by  contributing 
large  sums  of  money  to  the  treasury  of  their  lord, 
or  by  purchasing  the  rank  from  some  poor  inheri- 
tors of  samurai  blood  who  were  reduced  to  ex- 
treme penury,  so  as  to  be  no  more  able  to  serve 
their  daimyo  as  honourable  warriors. 

Examples  of  samurai  promoted  to  the  daimiate 
are  not  numerous  since  the  re-establishment  of 
peace  and  the  social  order  under  the  dictatorship 
of  the  Tokugawa,  for  it  had  become  for  every- 
body very  difficult  to  distinguish  himself  highly 
by  merits  other  than  military,  so  as  to  justify  suf- 
ficiently such  a  sudden  promotion.  Still  at  the  be- 
ginning of  the  Tokugawa  Shogunate  there  were 
many  vacant  territories,  caused  by  the  confiscation 


346  History  of  Japan 

of  the  territories  of  recalcitrant  dalmyo.  Many 
families  also  lost  their  hereditary  lands  on  ac- 
count of  the  extinction  of  the  male  line,  for  the 
Shogunate  did  not  at  first  recognise  inheritance 
through  an  adopted  son,  a  restriction  which  was 
later  abrogated.  Besides,  the  daimyo  in  general 
became  wiser  and  more  docile  in  order  not  to 
lose  their  estates  on  account  of  any  misdemeanour 
toward  the  Shogun.  As  the  result  of  such  changes 
the  later  Shogun  rarely  had  vacancies  at  his  dis- 
posal by  which  he  could  create  the  new  daimyo. 
If  the  Shogun  had  wished  to  promote  somebody 
in  spite  of  the  lack  of  a  vacant  lordship,  he  had 
to  part  with  a  portion  of  his  own  demain,  but 
this  alienation  of  land  from  the  Shogun  could  not 
be  repeated  too  often  without  damage  to  the  ma- 
terial resources  of  the  Shogunate.  Nevertheless, 
examples  have  not  been  wanting  now  and  then, 
examples  in  which  not  only  samurai  but  even 
plebeians  also  were  promoted  to  the  rank  of  dai- 
myo, some  of  them  owing  to  their  due  merits,  or 
to  the  blood-relationship  with  the  wives  or  the 
natural  mother  of  some  Shogun,  others  by  court- 
ing the  favour  of  their  master.  In  short,  the  in- 
truding upwards  into  the  daimyo  class  was  not  a 
matter  absolutely  impossible  for  the  people  in  the 
lower  strata. 

Inversely  the  descent  to  the  lower  social  status 
was  much  easier  than  the  ascent  to  the  higher  rank 
in  any  scale.  Nay,  for  various  reasons  many  per- 
sons had  been  obliged  to  climb  down  from  their 


Culture  and  Society          347 

original  high  position  in  society  to  a  lower  status. 
As  the  law  of  primogeniture  grew  rigorous  in  its 
enforcements  on  the  dalmyo  and  the  samurai,  the 
greater  part  of  the  scions  belonging  to  these 
classes  could  only  fully  enjoy  the  privilege  of  the 
society  in  which  they  were  born  during  childhood, 
unless  extinction  of  the  main  line  took  place. 
Descendants  of  daimyo  generally  gravitated  to 
samurai  rank,  and  those  of  samurai  had  to  turn 
themselves  into  plebeians,  in  so  far  as  they  did 
not  merit  to  be  called  to  service  as  independent 
samurai.  Thus  the  sliding  down  of  classes  was 
necessitated  by  the  law  of  succession.  Could  any 
line  of  social  demarcation  be  drawn  according  to 
the  difference  of  classes  in  the  face  of  such  shift- 
ings  upwards  and  downwards?  If  it  was  a  diffi- 
cult matter,  then  we  cannot  expect  to  find  any  sort 
of  culture  monopolised  by  a  certain  class  to  the 
last.  In  whichever  stratum  of  society  it  might 
have  originated,  it  was  sure  to  penetrate  sooner 
or  later  into  the  other  classes,  and  at  last  the 
whole  people  of  a  territory  absorbed  a  similar 
and  uniform  culture.  No  sort  of  territorial  bar- 
riers or  social  cleavage  proved  efficient  enough 
to  impede  the  inter-penetration  of  any  cultural 
movement. 

This  amalgamation  of  cultures  different  in  their 
origins  had  been  accelerated  by  the  introduction 
of  European  civilisation.  Though  the  free  inter- 
course of  the  Japanese  with  Europeans  had  been 
cut  short  in  the  third  decade  of  the  seventeenth 


348  History  of  Japan 

century  by  the  ordinances  of  the  Shogunate,  the 
country  had  never  been  absolutely  closed  against 
foreigners.  No  Japanese  had  been  allowed  to 
go  abroad  for  any  purpose  whatever,  but  we  con- 
tinued to  trade  in  the  specially  prescribed  port 
of  Nagasaki,  not  only  with  Chinese  but  also  with 
Dutch  merchants,  though  in  very  restricted  forms. 
Thus  while  the  Japanese  had  been  struggling  to 
mould  the  new  national  culture  out  of  promiscuous 
elements  which  had  existed  from  aforetime,  they 
had  been  receiving  the  Western  civilisation,  not 
en  masse  but  drop  by  drop,  so  that  we  had  no 
need  this  time  of  the  process  of  rumination  in 
digesting  the  introduced  exotic  culture,  as  we  had 
done  as  regards  Chinese  civilisation.  The  rigor* 
ous  exclusion,  carried  to  the  utmost,  of  all  Chris- 
tian literature,  whatever  its  relation  to  our  reli- 
gious tenets  might  have  been,  naturally  induced 
men  in  authority  to  resort  to  the  safest  methods, 
that  is  to  say,  to  restrict  the  kinds  of  books  to  be 
imported  to  the  narrowest  scope,  and  to  limit 
their  number  to  the  smallest  possible  minimum. 
Accordingly,  in  the  first  half  of  the  Tokugawa 
Shogunate,  very  few  useful  books  were  imported 
into  our  country,  and  the  nation  had,  therefore,  a 
very  scanty  opportunity  of  getting  knowledge 
through  books  about  things  European.  Yet  the 
commodities  which  these  Dutchmen  brought  to 
Deshima  to  be  exchanged  there  or  to  be  presented 
to  the  Shogun  at  Yedo,  gave  the  Japanese  who 
came  in  contact  with  them  some  idea  about  the 


Culture  and  Society          349 

modes  of  life  in  Europe.  Moreover,  after  the 
encouragement  assiduously  given  to  the  study  of 
things  European  by  the  Shogun  Yoshimune,  whose 
rule  covered  the  greater  part  of  the  first  half  of 
the  eighteenth  century,  the  process  of  infiltration 
of  Western  culture  through  the  narrow  door  of 
Nagasaki  had  become  suddenly  accelerated.  As 
the  encouragement  had  been  induced  by  the  ma- 
terial necessities  of  the  nation,  the  study  of  that 
time  about  things  European  was  naturally  limited 
to  those  sciences  which  were  indispensable  to  the 
daily  life  of  the  people  and  at  the  same  time  far 
from  being  spiritual,  like  astronomy,  medicine, 
botany,  and  so  forth.  Would  it  be  possible,  how- 
ever, to  ward  off  successfully  the  spiritual  side  of 
a  culture,  while  taking  in  the  material  side  of  the 
same  with  avidity,  as  if  the  two  parts  had  not  been 
interwoven  inseparably  as  a  single  entity?  Those 
branches  of  Western  knowledge,  which  we  did 
not  welcome  in  the  least,  but  which  were  none  the 
less  useful,  as  history,  and  political  as  well  as 
military  sciences  became  gradually  known  to  the 
Japanese,  though  very  fragmentarily  and  slowly. 
That  the  diplomatists  of  the  Shogunate  had  been 
able  to  conclude  with  the  foreign  powers,  which 
forced  our  doors  to  be  opened  to  them  against 
our  will,  treaties  which,  though  evidently  detri- 
mental to  our  national  honour,  were  the  largest 
concessions  we  could  obtain  from  them  at  that 
time,  shows  that  they  had  not  been  entirely  ig- 


350  History  of  Japan 

norant  of  the  condition  of  the  parties  with  which 
they  had  to  treat. 

Probably  there  are  foreign  readers  who  may 
entertain  some  doubt  about  the  lack  of  the  reli- 
gious element  in  the  Western  civilisation  which 
thus  flowed  into  our  country  from  the  first  half 
of  the  eighteenth  century.  They  may  well  con- 
sider, however,  the  change  of  religious  tempera- 
ment both  in  Japan  and  in  European  countries,  be- 
sides the  strictest  prohibition  rigorously  exer- 
cised by  the  Japanese  authorities.  The  Thirty 
Years  War,  the  beginning  of  which  falls  in  the 
fourteenth  year  of  the  Shogunate  of  Hidetada, 
the  son  and  successor  of  lyeyasu,  is  said  generally 
to  be  the  last  religious  war  in  Europe  fought  seri- 
ously. But  it  cannot  be  denied  that  in  the  latter 
part  of  the  long  war,  more  political  than  religious 
elements  predominated,  and  the  age  which  fol- 
lowed the  most  desolatory  war  was  characterised 
by  its  religious  toleration.  Could  the  Dutchmen, 
who  were  the  only  people  privileged  to  trade  with 
us,  have  been  expected  to  set  as  their  first  aim  the 
propagation  of  the  Christianity  of  their  Reformed 
Church  rather  than  material  gain  by  their  com- 
merce, as  the  Portuguese,  Spaniards,  and  Italians 
are  said  to  have  done  as  regards  their  Catholicism 
at  the  end  of  the  Ashikaga  period? 

Japan  had  also  changed  religiously  in  the  same 
direction.  The  end  of  the  Ashikaga  period  had 
witnessed  many  wars  which  may  be  called  reli- 
gious, very  rare  examples  since  the  time  of  the 


Culture  and  Society          351 

first  introduction  of  Buddhism.  Sectarians  of 
Shinshu  or  Ikkoshu  and  of  Nichirenshu  often 
fought  against  one  another.  Some  of  them  dared 
also  to  fight  against  powerful  feudatories,  and 
harassed  them.  Thus  Japan  was  about  to  expe- 
rience a  struggle  between  the  spiritual  and  the 
temporal  powers,  as  Europe  did  in  the  Middle 
Ages.  Nobunaga,  therefore,  gave  countenance  to 
Christian  missionaries  with  a  view  to  curbing  the 
arrogance  of  Buddhist  sectaries  by  the  inroad  of 
the  new  exotic  religion.  When  the  latter,  how- 
ever, proved  not  less  dangerous  to  the  political 
authority,  it  was  interdicted  by  Hideyoshi.  After 
all,  the  persecution  of  the  Christians  in  Japan  was 
not  of  religious  nature,  as  in  Europe,  but  essen- 
tially political.  This  explains  why  persecution 
could  extirpate  the  seeds  of  Christianity  sown  so 
full  of  hope  in  Japan,  in  spite  of  its  general  fail- 
ure in  European  countries. 

The  failure  of  the  Christian  propaganda,  how- 
ever, was  at  the  same  time  the  signal  of  the  down- 
fall of  the  influence  of  Buddhist  sectaries  in 
Japan.  lyeyasu,  who  had  the  most  bitter  expe- 
rience of  the  resistance  of  Ikko-votaries  in  his 
own  province,  had  but  to  pursue  the  same  reli- 
gious policy  as  his  predecessor,  against  Buddhism 
as  well  as  Christianity.  He  ordered  the  personal 
morals  of  Buddhist  priests  to  be  rigorously  su- 
pervised, and  inflicted  the  severest  punishment  on 
those  who  violated  the  law  of  celibacy.  It  was 
natural,  therefore,  that  secular  preachers  of  the 


352  History  of  Japan 

Ikkoshu  or  Shinshu,  who  made  it  their  rule  to  lead 
a  matrimonial  life,  should  not  have  been  held  in 
so  high  a  regard  as  the  regular  priests  of  other 
Buddhist  sects,  and  on  that  account  they  had  to 
recruit  their  believers  chiefly  among  people  in  the 
lower  strata  of  society.  As  to  other  sects  besides 
the  Shinsu,  he  showed  no  preference  for  any  one 
of  them,  and  he  often  called  himself  a  believer 
in  Buddhism  of  the  Syaka  Sect,  which  meant  that 
he  was  no  sectarian,  for  there  actually  existed  no 
such  sect  in  Japan.  Such  a  broad  tolerance,  how- 
ever, in  religious  matters  is  next  door  to  indiffer- 
entism,  and  paved  the  way  for  the  dwindling  of 
the  religious  spirit  in  the  ages  to  follow,  at  least 
in  the  prominent  part  of  the  nation. 

Another  factor  which  strengthened  the  spirit 
of  toleration,  or  let  me  say,  undermined  the  re- 
ligious spirit  of  the  people,  was  the  Confucian 
philosophy  expounded  by  Chutse,  a  celebrated 
savant  of  the  Sung  dynasty.  This  doctrine,  which 
had  been  accepted  by  the  court-philosophers  of 
the  Shogunate  as  the  only  orthodox  one,  was  ra- 
tionalistic to  the  extreme,  so  that  it  struck  a  heavy 
blow  to  many  cherished  superstitions  and  de- 
stroyed in  a  remarkable  manner  the  influence 
which  Buddhism  had  exercised  over  the  mind  of 
the  people  since  many  centuries,  just  like  the 
rationalism  of  the  eighteenth  century  in  Europe, 
which  ruined  the  authority  of  the  Church  and  su- 
perstition. Yet  among  the  educated  society  of  the 
age,  that  is  to  say,  the  samurai  class,  the  worship 


Culture  and  Society  353 

of  Buddhist  deities  continued  as  before,  super- 
ficially without  any  marked  change,  only  because 
parents  had  worshipped  them  and  taught  their 
children  to  do  likewise.  That  they  had  not  been 
men  strictly  to  be  called  Buddhist  is  evident  from 
the  fact  that  most  of  them  had  worshipped  in 
Shinto  shrines  with  almost  the  same  devotion  as 
they  did  in  Buddhist  temples.  It  cannot  be  denied 
that  in  their  view  of  human  life  there  was  a  pre- 
ponderating Buddhist  element,  but  as  it  had 
been  since  very  long  ago  that  our  civilisation  had 
become  imbued  with  Buddhism,  the  Japanese  of  the 
Tokugawa  period  were  not  conscious  of  what  part 
of  the  national  culture  they  specially  owed  to 
the  Indian  religion.  In  short,  religion  in  the  To- 
kugawa age  did  not  teach  what  to  worship,  but 
what  to  revere,  and  toward  the  latter  part  of  the 
period  we  had  less  necessity  to  have  more  of  a 
different  religion.  How  could  Christianity  force 
her  way  into  our  country  in  the  state  such  as  it 
was,  unless  by  the  endeavour  of  fanatics?  And 
the  Dutch  merchants  of  the  eighteenth  century 
were  not  religious  fanatics  at  all.  Through  such 
agents,  drops  of  the  secular  element  in  European 
civilisation  were  thrown  on  the  cultural  soil  of 
Japan,  which  had  been  already  secularised  much 
earlier  than  most  of  the  countries  in  the  West. 
No  spiritual  consternation  had  been  aroused, 
therefore,  in  the  cultural  world  of  our  country 
by  the  intrusion  of  exotic  factors,  which  only 
tended  to  augment  the  longing  for  the  higher 


354  History  of  Japan 

material  improvement  of  the  people,  by  never 
satiating  the  desire  for  it.  It  is  by  this  stimulus 
indeed  that  civilisation,  which  is  prone  to  become 
stationary  in  an  isolated  country  like  Japan,  es- 
caped the  danger  of  stagnation,  and  the  process 
of  moulding  and  remoulding  the  ever  new  na- 
tional culture  out  of  the  element  which  she  had 
possessed  and  that  which  she  had  added  to  her 
stock  since  time  immemorial,  went  on  silently  un- 
der cover  of  the  long  armed  peace,  and  at  last 
brought  forth  the  Revolution  of  the  Meidji. 


CHAPTER  XIII 

THE  RESTORATION  OF  THE  MEIDJI 

THE  great  political  change  which  took  place  in 
the  year  1867-1868  is  generally  called  the  Restor- 
ation, in  the  sense  that  the  imperial  power  was 
restored  by  this  event.  In  truth,  however,  the 
prerogative  of  the  Emperor  has  never  been  for- 
mally usurped,  and  none  has  dared  impudently  to 
declare  that  he  had  assumed  the  power  in  His 
Majesty's  stead.  All  the  virtual  potentates,  court- 
nobles  as  well  as  Shogun,  who,  each  in  his  day, 
held  unlimited  sway  over  the  whole  country,  had 
been  accustomed  to  style  themselves  modestly 
vicegerents  of  the  Emperor.  On  the  other  hand, 
the  change  was  more  than  a  mere  restoration,  for 
never  in  the  course  of  our  national  history  had  the 
resplendent  grandeur  of  the  Imperiality  reached 
the  height  in  which  it  now  actually  stands.  In  this 
respect  the  Restoration  of  the  Meidji  can  by  no 
means  be  taken  in  the  same  sense  as  the  two 
Restorations  famous  in  European  history,  that  of 
the  Stuarts  in  1660  and  of  the  Bourbons  in  1814. 
Renovation,  perhaps,  would  be  a  more  adequate 
term  to  be  used  here  than  Restoration,  to  desig- 
nate this  epoch-making  event  in  our  history.  We 

355 


356  History  of  Japan 

have  reconstructed  new  Japan  from  the  old  mate- 
rials, the  origins  of  some  of  which  are  lost  in  re- 
motest antiquity. 

If,  however,  we  should  consider  the  range  and 
intensity  of  the  momentous  change  which  was 
caused  by  the  overthrow  of  the  Tokugawa  Shogu- 
nate,  it  is  rather  a  revolution  than  a  renovation. 
Just  the  same  kind  of  disjunction  which  can  be 
perceived  in  the  transition  of  France  from  its  an- 
cient regime  to  the  Revolution  may  also  be  no- 
ticed in  the  Japanese  history  of  the  transition 
period,  which  divides  the  pre-Meidji  regime  from 
the  present  status.  The  difference  is  that  we  ac- 
complished in  five  years  a  counterpart,  though  on 
a  much  smaller  scale,  of  what  they  took  in  France 
nearly  a  generation  to  conclude ;  a  difference  which 
may  be  accounted  for  by  the  absence  in  our 
country  of  many  circumstances  which  helped  to 
make  the  French  Revolution  really  a  great  his- 
torical event.  That  those  circumstances  were 
lacking  in  our  history,  however,  is  by  no  means 
the  fault  of  our  nation.  No  impartial  foreign 
historian  would  grudge  a  few  words  of  praise 
to  the  Japanese  who  achieved  the  historic  thor- 
ough transformation  of  national  life  with  little 
or  no  bloodshed,  when  they  think  of  the  tre- 
mendous difficulties  which  Bismarck  had  to  en- 
counter in  his  grand  task  of  forming  the  new 
German  empire,  and  which  even  he  himself  could 
not  overcome  entirely. 

Then  how  did  this  momentous  change  happen 


The  Restoration  of  the  Meidji     357 

to  be  achieved  by  the  Japanese?  It  appeared  a 
wonder  even  to  the  eyes  of  many  contemporary 
Japanese.  It  surprises  us,  therefore,  to  say  the 
least,  that  many  foreigners  not  well-versed  in 
Japanese  history,  however  intelligent  and  other- 
wise qualified,  should  have  believed  almost  with- 
out exception  that  the  island  nation  had  some- 
thing miraculous  in  its  immanent  capacity,  which 
had  remained  latent  so  long  only  from  lack  of 
opportunity  to  manifest  itself.  But  to  the  con- 
templative mind,  equipped  at  the  same  time  with 
sufficient  knowledge  of  the  historical  development 
of  our  country,  there  was  nothing  magical  in  the 
national  achievement  of  the  Japanese  in  the  lat- 
ter half  of  the  nineteenth  century,  though  it  can- 
not be  denied  that  the  close  contact  with  the 
modern  civilisation  of  Europe  at  this  juncture 
gave  the  most  suitable  opportunity  to  the  people 
to  try  their  ability  nurtured  by  the  long  centuries 
of  their  history,  and  served  efficiently  to  quicken 
the  steps  of  national  progress  to  a  pace  far  more 
speedy  than  any  we  had  ever  marched  before. 

In  other  words,  our  national  progress  of  these 
fifty  years,  whether  it  might  be  apt  to  be  termed 
hurried  steps  or  strides,  was  a  thing  organized  by 
slow  degrees  during  the  long  tranquil  rule  of  the 
Tokugawa.  As  to  the  advancement  of  the  gen- 
eral culture  anterior  to  the  Revolution  of  the 
Meidji,  I  have  already  touched  on  that  in  the 
previous  chapter.  Here  I  will  limit  myself  to 
recapitulating  the  growth  of  the  nationalistic 


358  History  of  Japan 

spirit  among  the  people,  which  bore  as  its  fruit 
that  memorable  change  in  the  political  and  cul- 
tural sphere  of  our  country. 

The  tranquillity  restored  to  the  country  by  the 
powerful  dictatorship  of  Hideyoshi  and  lyeyasu, 
and  the  multiplication  of  books,  Japanese  as  well 
as  Chinese,  reprinted  in  blocks  or  in  type,  remark- 
ably enlarged  the  reading  circle  among  the  people. 
The  liberal  education  of  warriors  had  been  earn- 
estly encouraged  by  the  Shogunate,  mainly  for  the 
purpose  of  creating  intelligent  and  law-abiding 
gentlemen  out  of  rough  and  adventurous  fighters. 
A  great  many  of  the  daimyo  followed  the  example 
of  the  Shogunate  by  founding  one  or  more  schools 
in  their  own  territories  for  the  education  of  their 
own  samurai,  and  in  these  schools  moral  and  po- 
litical lessons  were  given,  besides  training  in  mili- 
tary arts.  The  samurai  were  taught  to  read  and 
understand  Chinese  classics,  with  the  purely  prag- 
matic purpose  of  enabling  them  to  follow  the  in- 
exhaustible precepts  preached  by  the  Chinese 
philosophers  of  various  ages,  and  at  the  same 
time  to  qualify  them  to  govern  the  people  accord- 
ing to  the  political  theories  of  Confucius,  when 
they  were  put  in  some  responsible  positions  in  the 
territorial  government  of  their  lord.  The  text- 
books used  in  this  curriculum  of  education  had 
been,  of  course,  Chinese  literature  of  the  sort 
which  might  be  called  political  miscellanies,  that 
is  to  say,  those  works  pertaining  to  morals,  poli- 
tics, and  history.  This  trio  was  to  Chinese  phil- 


The  Restoration  of  the  Meidji     359 

osophers  only  the  three  different  forms  of  the 
manifestation  of  one  and  the  same  principle,  for 
to  them  politics  was  an  enlarged  application  of 
that  very  principle,  which  when  applied  to  per- 
sonal matters  made  private  morals,  and  history 
was  only  another  name  for  the  politics  of  the 
past,  as  many  European  historians  still  also  be- 
lieve. Their  Japanese  pupils,  however,  took  up 
any  one  of  the  trio  they  fancied,  and  interlaced 
it  with  the  national  tradition,  each  according  to 
his  own  taste.  The  metaphysical  element  of  the 
Chinese  moral  philosophy  of  the  Sung  dynasty,  the 
time  in  which  Chinese  philosophy  reached  its  high 
flourishing  scholastic  stage,  was  thus  mingled  with 
Shintoism. 

Up  to  that  time  we  had  Shintoism  imbued  with 
Buddhism.  Now  having  repudiated  the  Indian 
elements  out  of  it,  we  introduced  in  their  stead 
the  Confucian  philosophy.  As  the  philosophy 
introduced  was  that  expounded  by  Chutse,  who 
was  an  intense  rigorist,  the  Shintoism  resulting 
from  this  mixture  was  rather  narrow  and  chauvin- 
istic, though  fervent  enough  to  inspire  people  of 
education.  One  of  the  most  conspicuous  founders 
of  this  kind  of  new  national  cult  was  Ansai  Yama- 
zaki,  who  was  born  in  1619.  On  account  of  his 
hair-splitting  doctrines,  tolerating  none  which  de- 
viated the  least  from  his,  his  disciples  were  al- 
ways in  very  bitter  controversy  with  one  another, 
each  asserting  himself  as  the  only  true  successor 
of  his  master,  and  dissension  followed  after  dis- 


360  History  of  Japan 

sension.  Many  of  them  were  so  pigheaded  as 
to  make  it  a  rule  not  to  serve  publicly  in  any  of- 
ficial capacity  under  the  Shogun  nor  the  diamyo, 
and  exerted  themselves  strenuously  to  spread 
their  propaganda  among  the  intelligent  classes  of 
the  people. 

Fuel  was  added  to  the  flame  of  the  national  spirit 
already  in  a  blaze  by  the  assiduous  study  of  the 
ancient  literature  of  our  country.  The  old  Japan- 
ese literature  studied  and  imitated  during  the  Ash- 
ikaga  period  had  not  gone  back  farther  than  the 
Tempyo  era.  If  we  except  some  novels  produced 
in  the  prime  of  the  courtiers'  regime,  such  as  the 
G en ji-monog atari,  the  literary  works  of  old  Japan 
highly  prized  by  the  courtiers  and  enlightened 
warriors  of  the  Ashikaga  were  limited  to  the  an- 
thologies of  short  Japanese  poems  by  various 
poets,  the  oldest  of  which  was  called  the  Kokin- 
shu,  said  to  have  been  compiled  in  905  A.D.  un- 
der Imperial  auspices.  The  Mannyo-shii,  which  is 
another  collection  of  Japanese  poems,  older  than 
those  gathered  into  the  Kokin-shu,  and  to  which 
I  referred  in  my  former  chapter  as  the  oldest  col- 
lection of  all  of  that  kind  in  Japan,  though  not 
entirely  abandoned,  could  not  cope  with  the  latter 
in  popularity,  being  considered  as  too  much  out 
of  date.  A  few  of  the  commentaries  or  interpre- 
tations of  trivial  topics  sung  or  celebrated  in  the 
poems  in  the  Kokin-shu  had  become  matters  of 
great  importance  in  the  art  of  Japanese  versi- 
fication, and  had  been  handed  from  one  master 


The  Restoration  of  the  Meidji     361 

to  a  favourite  disciple  as  an  esoteric  literary  se- 
cret not  to  be  lightly  divulged  to  the  hoi  polloL 
The  resuscitated  national  spirit  of  the  early  To- 
kugawa  period,  however,  induced  men  of  the 
literary  circles  of  the  time  no  longer  to  be  con- 
tented with  such  trivialities,  and  stimulated  them 
to  push  their  researches  backward  into  the  litera- 
ture still  more  ancient,  that  is  to  say,  to  launch 
themselves  upon  the  difficult  task  of  interpreting 
those  more  archaic  poems  contained  in  the  Man- 
nyo-shu.  The  foremost  of  these  philologists  was 
a  priest  by  the  name  of  Keichu,  born  in  1640  in 
the  vicinity  of  Osaka.  His  celebrated  work,  the 
Commentaries  on  the  Poems  of  the  Mannyo-shu, 
is  said  to  be  the  first  standard  hoisted  in  the 
philological  study  of  old  Japan  by  Japanese,  a 
study  the  inauguration  of  which  almost  corres- 
ponded in  time  with  the  establishment  of  durable 
peace  by  the  Tokugawa  Shogunate.  A  succes- 
sion of  savants  followed  in  his  wake,  and  the 
most  noted  among  them  were  Mabuchi  Kamo  and 
his  disciple  Norinaga  Motoori.  It  was  the  latter 
of  the  two  who  brought  the  study  of  Japanese  an- 
tiquities to  its  highest  point  in  the  Tokugawa  age. 
The  time  of  Motoori  covers  the  whole  of  the 
latter  half  of  the  eighteenth  century,  for  he  was 
born  in  1730  and  died  in  1801  in  the  province  of 
Ise.  Before  him  the  scope  of  researches  into  old 
Japan  had  been  limited  to  the  literary  products 
of  our  ancient  poets  and  novelists.  Though  the 
Nihongi  had  been  talked  of  by  the  scholars  of  the 


362  History  of  Japan 

Ashikaga  period  and  an  edition  reprinted  before 
the  advent  of  the  house  of  Tokugawa,  that  part 
of  the  work  which  had  been  most  widely  read  and 
commented  on  was  its  first  volume,  treating  about 
the  age  of  the  gods  and  the  mythical  beginning 
of  the  Empire.  In  other  words,  the  book  had  been 
prized  not  as  an  important  historical  work,  but 
as  a  sacred  book  of  Shintoism.  It  was  Motoori 
himself  who  first  studied  ancient  Japan,  not  only 
from  the  Shintoistic  point  of  view,  but  also  philo- 
logically  and  historically.  Classical  literature, 
which  became  the  object  of  his  indefatigable  re- 
search, was  not  restricted  to  books  of  mythology, 
but  included  also  the  ritual  book  of  "norito," 
several  collections  of  poems,  and  historical  works. 
First  of  all,  however,  he  concentrated  his  efforts 
upon  the  study  of  the  old  chronicle,  Kojiki.  He 
was  of  the  opinion  that  the  Kojiki  was  more  re- 
liable as  a  historical  source  than  the  Nihongit  as 
it  might,  according  to  him,  be  easily  judged  from 
its  archaic  phraseology  and  syntax,  in  contrast  to 
the  latter,  the  historical  veracity  of  which  must 
have  been  surely  impaired  by  its  adoption  of  the 
Chinese  rhetoric.  He  made  the  most  minute,  crit- 
ical study  of  the  text  of  the  Kojiki,  phrase  by 
phrase,  and  word  by  word.  The  famous  Kojiki- 
den,  or  "The  Commentaries  on  the  Kojiki"  is  the 
choicest  fruit  of  his  life-long  study.  In  it  the  his- 
tory, religion,  manners,  customs,  in  short,  all  the 
items  concerning  the  civilisation  of  ancient  Japan 
are  expounded  from  the  text  of  the  chronicle  it- 


The  Restoration  of  the  Meidji     363 

self,  frequently  corroborated  by  what  is  stated 
in  other  authentic  sources.  He  had  always  in 
view,  and  laid  great  stress  on  the  fact,  that  Japan 
had  possessed  from  her  beginning  what  was  to 
be  called  her  own,  purely  and  entirely  Japanese, 
quite  apart  from  the  culture  which  she  introduced 
afterwards  from  abroad.  It  was  to  this  unique 
and  nai've  state  of  things  in  primeval  Japan  taken 
as  a  whole  that  he  applied  the  term  Shintoism. 
According  to  him,  therefore,  naturalness,  purity 
and  veracity  were  the  cardinal  virtues  to  be  taught 
in  Shintoism,  from  which  he  thought  not  only  In- 
dian, but  Chinese  elements  also  should  be  eradi- 
cated. Thus  Shintoism  was  stripped  of  its  relig- 
ious apparel,  with  which  it  had  been  invested 
during  the  long  course  of  our  history,  and  by  his 
endeavours  it  approached  again  its  original  status 
as  a  simple  moral  cult  with  primitive  rituals;  but 
at  the  same  time  it  gained  immensely  in  strength, 
for  it  now  found  its  main  support  in  the  nation- 
ality deeply  rooted  in  the  daily  life  of  the  ancient 
Japanese.  By  him  the  Japanese  were  reminded 
of  their  national  beginning. 

This  philological  study  of  ancient  Japan  owed 
much,  in  its  early  stage,  to  the  stimulus  given  by 
the  growth  of  historiography  in  the  seventeenth 
century.  This  study  of  and  the  endeavour  to  write 
down  the  national  history  came  of  course  from  the 
political  necessity  of  the  time.  As  early  as  the 
fourth  decade  of  the  seventeenth  century,  the 
Shogunate  is  said  to  have  ordered  its  court  literati 


364  History  of  Japan 

to  compile  the  history  of  our  country  from  the 
earliest  times,  but  it  was  suspended  afterwards 
for  a  while.  A  little  posterior  to  this,  a  memor- 
able historiographical  institute  was  initiated  by 
Mitsukuni  Tokugawa,  one  of  the  grandsons  of 
lyeyasu  and  lord  of  Mito.  For  the  first  time  in 
our  country,  the  collection  of  historical  materials 
was  undertaken  on  a  grand  scale.  Collectors 
were  despatched  to  many  provinces  where  a  rich 
harvest  was  expected.  Kyoto  and  its  vicinity  were 
ransacked  with  special  attention.  The  material 
thus  rummaged  and  collected,  varying  from  those 
of  authentic  kinds  such  as  memoirs  of  ancient 
courtiers  and  court-ladies,  chronicles  kept  in  shrines 
and  temples,  and  documents  concerning  the  trans- 
actions of  numberless  manorial  estates,  down  to 
less  reliable  sorts  of  materials  such  as  stories, 
legends,  tales,  novels,  and  various  other  writings 
current  in  successive  ages,  had  been  criticised  in 
their  texts  with  tolerable  scientific  conscientious- 
ness. The  Dai-Nihon-shi,  or  "The  History  of 
Great  Japan,"  which  is  the  result  of  the  coopera- 
tion of  the  historians  of  the  Mito  school  engaged 
in  researches  under  the  auspices  of  Mitsukuni  and 
his  successors,  consists  of  two  hundred  and  thirty 
one  volumes,  and  has  taken  two  centuries  and  a 
half  for  its  completion,  the  last  volume  having 
been  published  in  1906.  In  its  form  the  grand 
history  is  an  imitation  of  the  Shih-chi  by  Ssuma- 
chien  of  the  Han  dynasty,  the  whole  system  be- 
ing divided  into  the  three  sections  of  the  annals 


The  Restoration  of  the  Meidji     365 

of  the  emperors,  biographers  of  noted  person- 
ages, and  miscellanies,  with  various  tables.  It  is 
by  no  means  a  complete  history  of  Japan,  for  it 
comes  down  only  to  1392,  the  year  in  which  the 
two  rival  houses  of  the  Imperial  family  were 
united  and  put  an  end  to  the  long  civil  war. 
Moreover,  it  was  only  in  the  middle  of  the  nine- 
teenth century,  that  the  first  two  sections  were  put 
into  print,  though  as  manuscripts  those  parts  had 
been  finished  much  earlier.  It  is  not,  therefore, 
on  account  of  the  publication  of  the  history,  but 
of  the  researches  themselves  and  their  by-prod- 
ducts,  that  the  historiography  of  the  Mito  school 
greatly  influenced  the  rise  of  the  nationalistic 
spirit  of  the  Japanese.  The  long  arduous  labours 
of  these  historians  were  consummated  in  expound- 
ing the  doctrine  that  the  Japanese  nation  had 
something  unique  in  its  civilisation  which  was 
worthy  to  be  guarded  carefully  and  fostered,  and 
that  the  only  bond  which  could  unite  the  nation 
spiritually  was  fidelity  towards  its  common  centre, 
the  Emperor,  whose  family  had  continued  to  reign 
over  the  country  since  time  immemorial.  The  his- 
tory is  often  criticised  as  being  too  pragmatic, 
narrow,  and  subjective,  therefore  not  scientific. 
If  we  consider,  however,  that  even  in  those  coun- 
tries in  the  West  where  the  study  of  history  is 
boasted  of  as  having  reached  a  high  stage  of  scien- 
tific investigation,  most  of  the  historians,  if  not 
the  histories  they  have  written,  have  been  also 
decidedly  pragmatic,  so  that  few  of  them  can  be 


366  History  of  Japan 

called  perfectly  objective,  then  we  should  not 
much  blame  the  historians  and  the  history  of  the 
Mito  school.  That  the  school  was  entirely  free 
from  any  sort  of  superstition  must  also  be  men- 
tioned as  one  of  its  chief  merits.  This  may  be 
attributed  to  the  rationalistic  influence  of  the 
doctrine  of  Chutse,  and  the  fact  that  the  history 
was  written  in  orthodox  Chinese  shows  how  these 
historiographers  were  imbued  with  Chinese  ideas. 
It  might  be  said,  however,  to  their  credit  that  the 
task  was  first  undertaken  in  an  age  in  which  the 
literary  language  of  our  country  had  not  yet  be- 
come entirely  independent  of  Chinese,  and  that, 
notwithstanding  the  adoption  of  that  language,  in 
committing  the  result  of  their  researches  to  writ- 
ing they  had  never  fallen  into  the  self-deception 
which  might  come  from  sinicomania.  Since  the 
inception  of  this  ever-memorable  historiographi- 
cal  undertaking,  the  town  of  Mito  had  continued 
to  be  the  hearth  of  nationalism  and  patriotism, 
and  thinkers  devoted  to  these  ideas  had  been 
very  glad  to  make  their  pilgrimage  from  all  parts 
of  Japan  to  the  centre  of  the  pure  Japanese  cul- 
ture, and  to  converse  with  these  historians  of  the 
noted  institution.  It  was  indeed  the  early  groups 
of  these  historians  who  first  stirred  up  the  nation- 
alistic spirit  in  the  later  seventeenth  century,  and 
their  successors  it  was  who  accelerated  and  most 
strongly  reinforced  the  national  movement  just 
before  the  Revolution.  No  school  of  learning  in 
Japan  had  even  been  so  powerful  and  effective  as 


The  Restoration  of  the  Meidji     367 

that  of  Mito  in  influencing  and  leading  the  spirit 
of  the  nation. 

The  torch,  however,  which  had  succeeded  in 
giving  blissful  light  to  illumine  the  whole  nation, 
burned  at  last  the  torch-bearer  himself  with  its 
blazing  flame.  Not  to  mention  that  the  finances 
of  the  territorial  lord  had  been  miserably  drained 
by  this  undertaking,  which  is  said  to  have  swal- 
lowed up  about  one-third  of  the  whole  revenue 
of  the  territory,  and  therefore  proved  too  heavy 
a  burden  for  the  small  income  of  the  lord.  Nar- 
row-mindedness, which  is  the  necessary  conse- 
quence of  rigorism,  tended  to  nurture  an  implac- 
able party  spirit  among  the  samurai  of  the  terri- 
tory educated  in  this  principle.  Internal  strife 
thus  ensued  which  implicated  not  only  the  whole 
samurai  but  people  of  all  classes.  In  short,  the 
territory  was  divided  against  itself.  Both  parties 
appealed  to  arms  at  last,  and  fought  against  each 
other,  until  both  had  to  lie  down  quite  exhausted. 
So  the  culture  which  the  historians  and  the  samu- 
rai of  Mito  raised  to  a  high  pitch  proved  to  be 
disastrous  to  their  own  welfare,  yet  the  good 
which  it  did  to  the  country  at  large  should  remain 
as  a  glory  to  those  who  sacrificed  themselves  for 
what  they  regarded  as  their  ideal. 

We  see  now  that  several  forces  had  cooper- 
ated in  accomplishing  the  final  unity  and  consoli- 
dation of  the  nation.  In  giving  the  finishing 
touch,  however,  to  the  task  of  many  centuries,  the 
enigmatic  relations  between  the  Emperor  and  the 


368  History  of  Japan 

Shogun  had  necessarily  to  be  cleared.  Though 
the  Shogunate  had  continued  to  transact  the  state 
affairs  as  if  he  had  been  the  sole  regent  of  the 
Emperor,  the  legal  status  of  the  former  had  never 
been  created  by  any  ordinance  issued  by  the  latter. 
No  emperor  had  ever  formally  confided  his  polit- 
ical prerogative  to  the  Shogun.  The  basis  on 
which  the  jurisdictional  power  of  the  Shogun  had 
rested  was  nothing  but  the  fait  accompli  connived 
at  and  acquiesced  in  by  the  Emperor.  If  the  pres- 
tige of  the  Emperor,  therefore,  which  had  once 
fallen  into  decadence,  should  be  revived,  the  posi- 
tion of  the  Shogun  was  sure  to  become  unten- 
able. The  historians  of  the  Mito  school  tried 
their  best  to  make  the  Emperor  the  nucleus  of  the 
national  consolidation.  Their  political  theory  had 
been  strongly  influenced  by  the  legitimism  enter- 
tained by  the  historians  of  the  Sung  dynasty,  and 
this  principle  of  legitimacy,  when  applied  to  the 
history  of  Japan,  must  have  led  only  to  the  con- 
clusion that  the  only  legitimate  and  therefore 
actual  sovereign  of  the  country  could  be  none 
other  than  the  Emperor  himself.  Needless  to 
say,  such  an  argument  was  injurious  to  the  politi- 
cal interests  of  the  Shogunate,  so  that  it  seems 
very  strange  that  the  theory  had  been  upneld  and 
loudly  heralded  by  these  historians  who  were 
under  the  protection  of  the  lord  of  Mito,  the  de- 
scendant of  a  scion  of  lyeyasu.  It  was  not,  of 
course,  the  intention  of  the  hereditary  lords  of 
Mito  and  their  historians  to  undermine  the  struc- 


The  Restoration  of  the  Meidji     369 

ture  of  the  Shogunate  from  its  foundation.  Hav- 
ing been,  however,  too  sharp  and  fervent  in  their 
argument,  they  had  been  unable  to  rein  themselves 
in,  before  the  interests  of  the  Shogunate  were 
thereby  jeopardised,  and  as  a  logical  consequence 
they  brought  unconsciously  to  a  terrible  catas- 
trophe the  whole  edifice  of  the  military  re- 
gime, in  which  alone  they  could  find  a  reason  for 
their  existence. 

The  spirit  of  the  nation  had  thus  been  under  the 
increasing  notion  that  the  coexistence  of  the  sov- 
ereign Emperor  with  the  omnipotent  Shogunate 
would  be  ultimately  impossible,  and  such  a  trend 
of  thought  had  been  highly  welcomed  in  those 
parts  of  Japan  where  militarism  had  the  least 
hold.  So  far,  however,  it  had  been  the  more  logi- 
cal pursuance  of  a  political  ideal,  and  if  no  op- 
portunity had  presented  itself  to  these  idealists 
to  put  their  theory  into  execution,  it  would  have 
remained  for  long  the  idle  vapouring  of  romantic 
and  irresponsible  politicians.  That  Japan  was 
saved  from  this  inaction,  and  that  the  virile  move- 
ment in  favour  of  the  revival  of  the  imperial 
prestige  was  at  last  undertaken,  must  be  attributed 
to  the  shock  and  stimulus  which  came  from  with- 
out, that  is  to  say,  to  the  coercion  on  the  part  of 
the  Western  nations  to  open  to  them  our  country, 
which  had  been  so  long  secluded  from  the  rest 
of  the  world. 

Since  the  so-called  "closing  of  the  country"  the 
Japanese  had  enjoyed  a  peaceful  national  life,  un- 


370  History  of  Japan 

disturbed  for  more  than  one  century  and  a  half, 
and  during  this  period  of  long  tranquillity  Japan 
had  been  able  to  prepare  herself  for  the  hardships 
which  she  was  about  to  encounter,  by  replenishing 
her  national  culture  and  transforming  it  so  as  to 
be  able  to  take  in  as  much  of  the  Western  civil- 
isation as  she  was  in  need  of,  without  fear  of 
thereby  endangering  her  own  national  existence. 
But  at  the  end  of  the  eighteenth  century  the  in- 
sistent knocking  of  foreigners  at  the  door  began 
to  be  heard,  first  at  the  back-door  of  the  Island 
Empire.  It  was  only  the  Russians  who,  having 
already  annexed  the  vast  tract  of  Siberia,  were 
now  ready  to  make  a  jump  forward,  and  loitered 
on  the  northern  coast  of  our  Hokkaido,  called 
the  island  of  Yezo  at  that  time.  This  was  the 
beginning  of  new  national  troubles.  It  was  not, 
however,  the  same  kind  of  foreign  troubles  as 
those  which  we  had  tried  and  succeeded  in  getting 
rid  of  in  the  early  days  of  the  Shogunate.  There 
was  no  fear  now  of  suffering  from  the  religious 
intrigues  of  foreign  missionaries.  The  danger, 
if  there  were  any,  was  purely  of  a  political  nature. 
Needless  to  say,  the  nation  had  had  no  voice 
in  determining  the  Shogunate's  policy  of  "shutting 
up  the  country",  and  had  not  understood  well 
the  merit  or  demerit  of  the  policy  itself,  but  hav- 
ing been  accustomed  for  a  long  time  to  the  iso- 
lated national  existence,  and  puffed  up  not  a  little 
into  self-conceit  by  the  growth  of  the  nationalistic 
spirit,  they  were  unconsciously  induced  to  believe 


The  Restoration  of  the  Meidji     371 

that  the  status  they  were  in  must  be  the  only  nor- 
mal condition  of  the  country.  The  people  at 
large,  though  relieved  of  the  overdue  influence  of 
China,  yet  had  a  very  scanty  knowledge  of  the  con- 
dition in  which  Europe  and  America  were  at  that 
time,  and  did  not  wish,  in  the  least,  to  be  deranged 
by  the  intrusion,  however  well-meant,  of  any  for- 
eigner into  their  quite  abode,  in  spite  of  the  utter 
impossibility  of  continuing  such  a  national  life 
ad  infinitum  in  the  face  of  the  changed  circum- 
stances of  the  world,  caused  by  the  eastward  ex- 
pansion of  various  European  nations,  and  by  the 
rise  of  a  new  power  on  the  American  continent, 
the  power  which  had  just  acquired  access  to  the 
shore  of  the  Pacific.  Those  who  were  then  at 
the  helm  of  state,  that  is  to  say,  the  statesmen 
of  the  Shogunate,  shared  nearly  the  same  opinion 
with  the  nation  at  large.  Not  only  for  the  na- 
tional welfare,  but  in  the  interests  of  the  Shogu- 
nate  itself,  they  thought  it  best  to  keep  up  the 
status  quo  as  long  as  possible.  Unfortunately,  the 
foreigners  who  now  knocked  at  our  doors  were 
not  unarmed  like  those  who  had  come  two  cen- 
turies before,  neither  were  they  so  humble  and 
docile  as  the  Dutchmen  at  Deshima  were  accus- 
tomed to  be.  In  order  to  keep  them  off  in  spite 
of  their  importunate  wish  to  the  contrary,  we 
had  to  provide  for  emergencies.  So  the  Sho- 
gunate  tried  to  make  military  preparations,  to 
defend  the  country  in  case  of  necessity  and  drive 
away  the  intruders  by  force  of  arms.  The  more, 


372  History  of  Japan 

however,  the  Shogunate  tried  to  arm  the  nation 
against  the  foreigners,  the  more  difficult  it  found 
the  task  it  had  in  view.  As  the  result  of  the  long 
enjoyment  of  peace,  the  people  had  become  in- 
ured to  ease  and  luxury,  and  had  lost  much 
of  their  martial  spirit,  of  which  they  had  been  ex- 
ceedingly proud  as  their  characteristic  attribute. 
Moreover,  the  country  having  been  parcelled  out 
into  nearly  three  hundred  territories,  it  was  very 
hard  for  the  Shogunate  to  mobilise  the  warriors 
of  the  whole  empire  at  its  sole  command.  On  the 
other  hand,  the  material  progress  of  the  Western 
nations,  achieved  during  the  time  of  our  seclu- 
sion, had  been  really  astonishing.  The  difficulty 
of  coping  with  them  now  became  far  greater  for 
us  than  it  had  been  at  the  end  of  the  sixteenth 
century.  Notwithstanding  these  overwhelming 
difficulties,  the  Shogunate  persisted  in  its  endea- 
vour to  strengthen  the  national  defences.  The 
martial  spirit  of  the  nation  was  gradually  re- 
awakened, but  new  internal  difficulties  were  cre- 
ated by  thus  mobilising  the  nation,  divided  as  it 
was  into  motley  groups.  The  martial  spirit  which 
the  Shogunate  aroused  was  turned  against  itself, 
and  the  Shogunate  proved  unable  to  steer  through 
the  crisis  at  last. 

At  first  the  opinion  of  the  educated  class  of  the 
nation  was  conflicting,  but  a  few  were  eager  to 
see  the  necessary  overthrow  of  the  regime  of  the 
Shogun.  The  great  part  gradually  concurred  in 
denouncing  the  incapacity  of  the  Shogunate  to 


The  Restoration  of  the  Meidji     373 

fulfil  by  itself  the  task  which  it  was  called  upon 
to  accomplish.  Still  many  were  in  favour  of  sup- 
porting the  Shogunate  in  order  to  enable  it  to 
carry  through  its  traditional  policy  of  seclusion. 
Some  advocated  even  the  closer  union  of  the  Sho- 
gunate with  the  Imperial  court,  which  was  now 
beginning  to  become  again  the  influential  political 
centre  of  the  nation  in  opposition  to  the  power  at 
Yedo,  so  that  there  might  have  been  a  fear  of  the 
two  powers  coming  into  collision.  The  conclusion, 
however,  of  the  treaty  with  the  United  States  in 
1858,  and  subsequently  with  other  powers,  bitterly 
disappointed  these  sincere  friends  of  the  Shogun- 
ate and  emboldened  its  adversaries.  Hitherto 
those  who  had  diametrically  opposed  the  Shogun- 
ate were  men  who  had  never  been  in  any  position 
politically  responsible.  In  other  words,  they  were 
doctrinaires,  and  not  men  of  action,  so  that  there 
could  be  no  serious  danger  to  the  Shogunate  so 
long  as  they  contented  themselves  only  with  argu- 
ing about  national  affairs  in  highflown  language. 
But  the  disappointment  which  the  Shogunate  gave 
to  its  friends,  turned  them  into  sympathisers  with 
the  radical  opponents.  The  danger  was  thus 
shifted  from  foreign  relations  to  the  serious  in- 
ternal question,  whether  the  Shogunate  should  be 
allowed  to  exist  any  longer  or  not.  Those  who 
wished  for  the  revival  of  the  imperial  prestige 
or  the  overthrow  of  the  existing  regime,  whatever 
form  the  revolution  might  take,  wielded  as  their 
forcible  weapon  to  attack  the  Shogunate  the  de- 


374  History  of  Japan 

nunciation  that  the  sacred  Land  of  the  Gods  had 
been  opened  to  the  sacrilegious  tread  of  hairy  bar- 
barians, and  their  slogan  was  so  persuasive  that 
it  led  the  imperial  court  at  Kyoto  to  issue  an  order 
urging  the  Shogunate  to  repudiate  the  already 
concluded  treaties  and  to  return  to  the  time-hon- 
oured seclusion  policy,  a  task  of  utter  impossibil- 
ity. To  this  august  command  from  Kyoto,  the 
Shogunate  could  but  respond  very  obsequiously, 
being  intimidated  somewhat  by  the  loud  clamour 
of  these  conservative  patriots.  Or  it  may  be  said 
that  the  military  government  succumbed  to  the 
combined  force  of  the  court-nobles  and  the  terri- 
torial politicians.  The  marriage  of  the  four- 
teenth Shogun  to  one  of  the  sisters  of  the  Em- 
peror Komei,  in  the  year  1861,  though  concluded 
for  the  sake  of  the  rapprochement  of  the  Imperial 
court  and  the  Shogunate,  did  not  prove  so  service- 
able in  saving  the  tottering  edifice  of  the  Toku- 
gawa  regime  as  had  been  expected.  Finding  that 
the  power  and  the  resources  of  the  Shogunate 
were  inadequate  to  perform  the  duty  which  it  had 
pledged  itself  to  accomplish,  Yoshihisa  Toku- 
gawa,  the  fifteenth  and  last  of  the  Shogun,  re- 
signed all  the  power  he  had,  political  as  well  as 
military,  into  the  hands  of  the  Emperor  Meidji, 
who  had  just  succeeded  his  father  the  Emperor 
Komei.  This  happened  in  November  of  the  year 
1867.  A  little  previous  to  this  the  proposition 
of  the  Shogunate  to  open  the  port  of  Hyogo,  now 
Kobe,  to  foreign  trade  was  agreed  to  by  the  Em 


The  Restoration  of  the  Meidji     375 

peror,  a  fact  which  proves  how  difficult  it  was  to 
maintain  the  out-of-date  seclusion-policy.  From 
this  it  can  be  seen  that  the  Shogunate  of  the  Toku- 
gawa  fell,  after  the  lapse  of  two  hundred  sixty 
four  years  from  its  beginning,  not  from  lack  of 
foresight  on  the  part  of  their  statesmen,  but  solely 
from  loss  of  prestige. 

The  prestige  of  the  Shogunate  was  lost,  simply 
because  the  system,  such  as  it  was,  had  become 
anachronistic  in  the  face  of  the  altered  conditions 
of  the  country,  which  had  been  steadily  progres- 
sing during  these  centuries.  In  other  words,  the 
Tokugawa  Shogunate  had  been  undermining  it- 
self for  a  long  time  by  having  courageously  un- 
dertaken the  honourable  task  which  it  was  des- 
tined to  perform  in  our  national  history,  and  it 
collapsed  just  in  time  when  it  had  accomplished 
its  mission.  The  fall  of  the  Shogunate,  therefore, 
must  be  said  to  have  taken  place  very  opportunely. 
The  overthrow  of  the  Shogunate,  however,  did 
not  mean  the  mere  downfall  of  the  House  of  the 
Tokugawa;  but  it  was  the  final  collapse  of  the 
military  regime,  which  had  actually  ruled  Japan 
for  nearly  seven  centuries,  and  the  demolition  of 
such  a  grand  and  elaborate  historical  edifice  as 
the  Shogunate  could  not  be  expected  to  be  car- 
ried out  without  a  catastrophe.  That  catastrophe 
came  in  the  form  of  a  civil  war,  which  raged  over 
the  country  for  more  than  a  year. 

After  the  resignation  of  the  last  of  the  Shogun, 
the  new  government  was  instantly  set  up  at  Ky- 


376  History  of  Japan 

oto,  at  the  head  of  which  an  imperial  prince  was 
placed,  who  had  to  control  all  the  state  business 
in  the  name  of  the  Emperor.  The  councillors  un- 
der him  were  chosen  not  only  from  court-nobles, 
but  also  from  the  able  samurai  who  belonged  to 
the  party  antagonistic  to  the  Shogunate.  This 
exasperated  the  partisans  of  the  last  Shogunate. 
Though  the  ex-Shogun  had  renounced  his  heredi- 
tary rights  as  the  actual  ruler  of  Japan,  he  still 
remained  a  daimyo  even  after  his  resignation,  and 
as  a  daimyo  he  was  the  most  powerful  of  all,  for 
he  had  a  far  greater  number  of  the  samurai  under 
him  in  his  hatamoto  than  any  other  of  his  col- 
leagues. Besides,  he  had  many  sympathisers 
among  the  daimyo.  These  vassals  and  friends  of 
the  ex-Shogun  were  discontented  at  the  turn  which 
the  course  of  events  had  taken,  and  wished  at  least 
to  rescue  him  from  a  further  decrease  of  his  in- 
fluence. Induced  at  last  by  these  followers  to  try 
his  fortune,  the  ex-Shogun  asked  for  an  imperial 
audience,  which  was  refused.  Then  he  attempted 
to  force  his  entrance  into  the  city  of  Kyoto,  es- 
corted by  his  own  guards  and  the  forces  of  the 
friendly  daimyo,  and  was  met  by  the  Imperialist 
army,  composed  of  the  forces  of  the  lords  of  Sa- 
tsuma,  Nagato,  Tosa,  Hizen,  and  other  daimyo, 
the  greater  part  of  whom  had  their  territories  in 
the  western  provinces  of  Japan.  At  the  end  of 
January,  1868,  the  two  opposing  armies  came 
into  collision  at  Fushimi  and  Toba,  villages  in 
the  southern  suburb  of  the  old  metropolis,  and 


The  Restoration  of  the  Meidji     377 

the  forces  of  the  ex-Shogun  gave  way.  Yoshihisa 
hurriedly  retreated  to  Osaka  with  his  staff,  and 
thence  by  sea  to  Yedo,  whither  the  imperial  army 
pursued  him  by  the  land-route. 

At  Yedo  some  of  the  vassals  of  the  Tokugawa 
could  not  make  up  their  minds  to  submit  compla- 
cently to  the  unavoidable  lot  of  their  suzerain  and 
of  themselves,  and  insisted  on  making  their  last 
stand  against  the  approaching  Imperialists  by  de- 
fending the  city.  But  the  wiser  counsel  prevailed, 
and  the  castle  was  surrendered  to  the  Imperialists 
without  bloodshed  at  the  end  of  April.  A  hand- 
ful of  desperate  samurai,  who  fortified  themselves 
in  the  precincts  of  the  Temple  of  Uyeno,  the  site 
of  the  present  metropolitan  park,  was  easily  sub- 
dued by  the  Imperialists.  The  ex-Shogun,  who 
had  been  interned  at  Mito  on  account  of  his  hav- 
ing fought  against  the  Imperialists,  was  released 
soon  afterwards.  By  an  Imperial  grace,  a  mem- 
ber of  a  lateral  branch  of  the  Tokugawa  was  or- 
dered to  succeed  the  ex-Shogun  as  daimyo,  and 
made  the  hereditary  lord  of  Suruga.  The  first 
phase  of  the  Revolution  thus  came  to  an  end. 

The  country,  however,  which  had  once  been  set 
astir  could  not  be  pacified  so  easily.  The  next 
to  be  chastised  was  the  lord  of  Aidzu,  a  daimyo 
who,  remaining  faithful  to  the  Shogunate  to  the 
last,  fought  desperately  in  the  battle  of  Fushimi 
and  Toba,  and  retired  to  his  territory  in  northern 
Japan  after  his  defeat.  Though  he  found  sup- 
porters among  the  daimyo  of  the  neighboring  ter- 


378  History  of  Japan 

ritories,  the  forces  of  the  Imperialists  were  in  the 
meanwhile  immensely  reinforced,  for  the  diamyo 
of  middle  Japan,  who  had  hitherto  been  neutral, 
now  joined  their  colleagues  of  the  south.  The 
war  began  anew  in  the  middle  of  June  in  the  north- 
ern part  of  Honto.  The  combined  forces  of  the 
northern  diamyo  had  to  fight  against  fearful  odds, 
and  were  successively  defeated.  The  castle  of 
Aidzu  was  closely  invested,  and  capitulated  at 
the  beginning  of  November.  The  supporters  of 
the  lord  of  Aidzu  also  surrendered  one  after  an- 
other to  the  Imperialists.  It  was  soon  after  this 
that  the  adoption  of  the  name  of  Meidji,  as  the 
designation  of  the  opening  era,  was  promulgated 
at  Kyoto. 

The  last  chivalrous  feat  in  behalf  of  the  Sho- 
gun  was  performed  by  the  fleet  which  belonged 
to  the  former  Shogunate.  Before  the  Revolution 
the  Shogunate  had  kept  a  fleet  consisting  of  eight 
ships,  commanded  by  Admiral  Yenomoto,  who 
had  received  his  naval  education  in  Holland.  This 
was  the  only  navy  worthy  of  its  name  in  Japan  at 
that  time.  After  the  capitulation  of  Yedo  the 
Imperial  Government  ordered  half  of  the  men- 
of-war  belonging  to  the  fleet  to  be  given  up  to 
itself,  allowing  the  rest  to  be  kept  in  the  hands 
of  the  Tokugawa.  The  admiral  was,  however, 
too  sorrowful  to  part  with  his  ships,  so  that  a  little 
before  the  capitulation  of  Aidzu,  he  sailed  out 
with  all  his  fleet  from  the  harbour  of  Yedo,  and 
occupied  Hakodate,  a  port  at  the  southern  end 


The  Restoration  of  the  Meidji     379 

of  the  island  of  Yezo.  But  the  forces  he  was  able 
to  land  were  no  match  for  the  victorious  Imperial- 
ists, who  became  now  quite  free  in  all  other  quar- 
ters. The  harbour  of  Hakodate  was  soon  block- 
aded, and  the  Pentagon  Fortress  was  besieged 
and  taken.  In  June  of  the  following  year  the 
whole  island  of  Yezo  was  subdued,  and  the  new 
name  of  Hokkaido  was  given  to  it. 

With  the  surrender  of  Hakodate  the  military 
history  of  the  Revolution  of  the  Meidji  came  to 
its  close,  but  the  political  transformation  was  not 
yet  consummated.  What  was  already  accom- 
plished concerned  only  the  elimination  of  the 
Shogun  from  the  political  system  of  the  country 
and  the  establishment  of  the  direct  rule  of  the 
Emperor  over  the  daimyo.  The  latter,  not  re- 
duced in  number  and  undiminished  in  extent  of 
territories,  except  a  few  who  had  forfeited  the 
whole  or  a  part  of  their  territories  by  their  resis- 
tance to  the  imperial  order,  still  continued  to  hold 
their  hereditary  rights  over  their  land  and  people 
as  in  the  time  of  the  Tokugawa.  In  short,  the  na- 
tional question  had  only  been  partially  solved,  and 
there  remained  much  to  be  done  before  the  at- 
tainment of  the  final  goal,  the  complete  recon- 
struction of  the  whole  empire.  Various  impor- 
tant changes  necessary  for  it  were  put  into  prac- 
ice  during  the  next  four  years. 

In  the  year  1868,  the  city  of  Yedo  changed  its 
name  to  Tokyo,  which  means  the  eastern  capital, 
and  was  made  henceforth  the  constant  residence 


380  History  of  Japan 

of  the  Emperor  instead  of  Kyoto.  This  was  the 
beginning  of  the  new  era.  In  July  1869,  the  feu- 
dal rights  of  the  daimyo  over  their  territories  and 
people  were  abolished,  after  the  voluntary  renun- 
ciation of  their  privileges  on  the  part  of  the  latter, 
who  now  became  hereditary  governors  salaried 
according  to  the  income  of  each  respective  terri- 
tory. If  the  Revolution  had  stopped  short  at  this, 
then  the  prestige  of  the  territorial  lords  might 
have  still  remained  almost  intact,  for  they  still 
resided  in  the  same  territories  which  they  had 
owned  as  daimyo,  and  they  had  still  under  them 
standing  forces,  consisting  of  their  former  sam- 
urai. The  juridical  transformation  of  what  they 
owned  as  their  private  property  into  objects  of 
their  public  jurisdiction  was  a  change  of  too  deli- 
cate a  nature  to  manifest  to  the  multitude  of  the 
people  a  political  aspect  totally  different  from  that 
of  the  time  of  the  Shogunate.  It  needed  three 
years  more  to  sweep  away  all  these  feudal  shackles. 
In  August  of  the  year  1871  the  division  of 
the  empire  into  territories  was  replaced  by  the 
division  into  prefectures,  which  were  far  less  in 
number  than  the  territories  of  the  daimyo,  the 
jurisdiction  of  the  hereditary  governors  was  sus- 
pended, and  to  each  of  the  prefectures  a  new  gov- 
ernor was  appointed.  The  allowances  of  the 
samurai,  which  had  still  been  hereditary,  were 
also  suspended,  and  their  compensation  was  ren- 
dered in  form  of  a  bond,  with  gradations  accord- 
ing to  their  former  income.  The  new  decimal 


The  Restoration  of  the  Meidji     381 

monetary  system  was  adopted.  The  Gregorian 
calendar  was  adopted.  The  military  service  which 
had  been  the  exclusive  calling  of  the  samurai  class 
was  now  extended  to  people  of  all  classes.  The 
conscription  system  was  introduced  after  the  ex- 
amples of  the  Western  countries,  and  this  reform 
naturally  led  to  the  loss  of  the  privileges  of  the 
samurai.  All  people  were  now  made  equal  before 
the  law.  Japan  was  at  last  clothed  in  quite  mod- 
ern attire. 


CHAPTER  XIV 

EPILOGUE 

JAPAN  of  the  past  fifty  years  since  the  Revo- 
lution of  the  Meidji  may  be  said  to  have  been  in 
a  transition  period,  although  we  do  not  know 
when  nor  how  she  will  settle  down  after  all.  As 
a  transition  period  in  the  history  of  any  country 
is  generally  its  most  eventful  epoch,  so  our  last 
half  century  has  been  the  busiest  time  the  nation 
has  ever  experienced.  Not  only  that.  We  were 
ushered  into  the  wide  world,  just  at  the  time  when 
the  world  itself  began  to  have  its  busiest  time  also. 
The  opening  of  the  country  at  such  a  juncture 
may  be  compared  to  a  man  in  deep  slumber,  who 
is  aroused  suddenly  in  the  dazzling  daylight  of 
noon.  Moreover,  Japan  has  had  another  and 
not  less  important  business  to  attend  to,  that  is 
to  say,  she  had  to  trim  herself,  and  complete  her 
internal  reconstruction,  a  task  which  may  not 
perhaps  come  to  its  completion  for  a  long  time 
to  come.  Excitation  must  be  the  natural  outcome 
to  anybody  placed  in  such  a  position.  Japan  has 
over-worked  indeed,  and  is  yet  working  very  hard. 
She  has  achieved  not  a  little  already,  and  is  still 
struggling  to  achieve  more.  If  we  would  try  to 

382 


Epilogue  383 

describe  the  history  of  Japan  during  these  fifty 
years,  we  should  have  more  to  tell  than  the  his- 
tory of  the  preceding  twenty  centuries.  That  is 
not,  however,  possible  in  the  scope  of  this  small 
volume.  Another  reason  why  we  need  not  ex- 
patiate on  this  period  of  our  national  history  is 
because  it  is  comparatively  better  known  to  for- 
eigners than  the  history  of  old  Japan,  though  we 
are  not  sure  that  it  is  not  really  misunderstood. 
The  root,  however,  of  the  misapprehension  of 
Japan  of  the  Meidji  era  lies  deep  in  the  mis- 
apprehension of  the  history  of  her  past,  for  one 
who  can  understand  rightly  Japan  of  the  past, 
may  not  err  much  in  comprehending  Japan  of  the 
present.  I  will  not,  therefore,  describe  in  detail 
the  contemporary  history  of  Japan,  but  will  con- 
tent myself  by  giving  merely  a  cursory  view  of  it. 
It  was  none  but  the  samurai,  the  mainstay  of 
feudal  Japan,  who  brought  about  the  momentous 
change  of  the  Meidji,  and  it  was  the  samurai  of 
the  lower  class,  who  acted  the  chief  part  in  the 
Revolution.  The  savants,  however  they  might 
have  proved  useful  in  fanning  the  nationalistic 
spirit  among  the  people,  were  after  all  not  men 
of  action.  Only  the  samurai,  when  permeated 
with  this  spirit,  could  effect  such  a  grand  political 
change.  There  may  be  no  doubt  that  the  samu- 
rai undertook  the  task  for  the  sake  of  the  na- 
tional welfare,  and  most  of  all  not  to  restore  the 
already  rotten  regime  which  had  once  existed  be- 
fore the  advent  of  the  Kamakura  Shogunate.  But 


384  History  of  Japan 

this  evident  truth  was  known  neither  to  the  court- 
nobles,  who  dreamt  only  of  seeing  their  past  glory 
recovered,  nor  to  those  idealists  of  ultra-conser- 
vative trend,  who  sincerely  believed  that  the  his- 
tory of  nearly  twelve  centuries  might  be  simply 
ignored  and  the  golden  days  of  the  Nara  period 
be  called  back  into  life  once  more.  The  latter 
strongly  urged  the  personal  government  of  the 
Emperor  and  the  restoration  of  the  worship  of 
the  national  gods  to  its  ancient  glory,  while  the 
former  strove  to  recover  the  reins  of  government 
into  their  own  hands.  It  was  the  result  of  their 
compromise,  that  the  political  organisation  of  the 
Tamo  era  was  formally  revived,  though  with  not 
a  few  indispensable  modifications.  Think  of  the 
statute  of  eleven  hundred  seventy  years  before 
recalled  to  reality  again,  and  of  a  country,  gov- 
erned by  a  such  a  petrified  statute,  entering  the 
concourse  of  the  nations  of  the  world  in  the  nine- 
teenth century.  How  comical  it  would  have  been 
if  such  a  retrogression  had  been  allowed  to  pro- 
ceed even  for  a  generation?  The  first  to  be  dis- 
appointed were  the  court-nobles.  The  expecta- 
tion of  the  ultra-conservatives  was  also  far  from 
being  fulfilled.  The  country  was  in  urgent  need 
of  a  new  legislation  conformable  to  the  new  state 
of  things,  and  the  restored  statute  was  soon  found 
to  be  utterly  inadequate  to  serve  the  purpose.  The 
quixotic  movement  of  the  bigoted  Shintoists  to 
persecute  Buddhism,  which  led  to  the  lamentable 
demolition  of  many  Buddhist  sculptures  and 


Epilogue  385 

buildings  of  high  artistic  merit,  was  to  subside 
as  soon  as  it  was  started,  for  it  was  now  the  age 
of  complete  religious  toleration,  which  was  ex- 
tended even  to  Christianity  soon  afterwards. 

The  most  extravagant  expectation  of  the  ultra- 
conservatives  was  thus  frustrated,  but  the  con- 
servative spirit  in  the  nation,  which  was  by  no 
means  to  be  swept  away  at  all  found  its  devotees 
among  the  class  of  the  samurai.  Though  they 
were  the  real  makers  of  the  Revolution,  yet  the 
loss  of  their  privileges  and  material  interests 
which  it  entailed,  touched  them  sorely.  A  very 
small  fraction  of  them  served  the  new  govern- 
ment as  officials  and  soldiers  of  high  and  low 
rank,  and  could  enjoy  life  much  more  comfortably 
than  they  did  in  the  pre-Meidji  days.  The  greater 
part  of  the  samurai,  however,  were  obliged  to 
betake  themselves  to  some  of  the  callings  which 
they  were  accustomed  to  look  down  upon  with 
disdain,  for  if  they  did  not  work,  the  compen- 
sation which  they  received  from  the  government 
did  not  suffice  to  sustain  them  for  long.  Some  of 
them  preferred  to  become  farmers,  and  those  who 
persisted  in  that  line  generally  fared  well.  Many 
others  turned  themselves  into  merchants,  and 
mostly  failed;  being  accustomed  to  the  simplici- 
ties of  the  life  and  the  code  of  soldiers,  and  ut- 
terly unversed  in  the  complexities  of  the  code 
commercial,  and  the  trickeries  of  the  life  mer- 
chants; and  the  small  capital  obtained  by  selling 
their  compensation-bonds  was  soon  squandered. 


386  History  of  Japan 

What  wonder  if  they  began  to  regret  and  whine 
for  better  days  of  the  past?  Discontentment  be- 
came rampant  among  them;  but  the  inducement 
to  its  disruption  was  provided  by  the  diplomatic 
tension  with  Korea. 

I  have  no  space  here  to  dwell  upon  the  intri- 
cate history  of  the  differences  between  Korea  and 
our  country  in  the  later  seventies  of  the  nineteenth 
century.  Suffice  it  to  say  that  the  militaristic 
party  in  and  out  of  the  government  favoured  the 
war  with  Korea,  while  the  opposing  party  was 
against  it,  considering  it  injurious  to  sound  na- 
tional progress,  especially  at  a  time  when  it  was 
an  immediate  necessity  for  the  welfare  of  the 
country  to  devote  all  its  resources  to  internal  re- 
construction. The  war  party  with  Takamori 
Saigo  at  its  head  seceded  from  the  government. 
Saigo  had  been  a  great  figure  since  the  Revolu- 
tion, as  the  representative  samurai  of  the  Sa- 
tsuma,  and  had  a  great  many  worshippers,  so  that 
even  after  his  retirement  his  influence  over  the 
territory  of  Satsuma  was  immense.  At  last  he 
was  forced  by  his  adorers,  whose  ill-feeling  against 
the  government  now  knew  no  bounds,  to  take  up 
arms  in  order  to  purge  the  government,  which 
seemed  to  them  too  effeminate  and  too  radical. 
Not  only  the  warlike  and  conservative  samurai 
of  Satsuma,  but  all  the  samurai  in  the  other  pro- 
vinces of  Kyushu,  who  sympathised  with  them,  rose 
up  and  joined  them.  Siege  was  laid  by  them  to 


Epilogue  387 

the  castle  of  Kumamoto,  the  site  of  regimental 
barracks. 

So  far  they  had  been  successful,  but  owing  to 
insufficiency  of  ammunition  and  provisions,  they 
could  not  force  their  way  much  farther.  More- 
over, the  Imperial  Army  recently  organised,  re- 
cruited mostly  from  the  common  people  by  the 
conscription  system,  proved  very  efficient,  owing 
to  the  use  of  Snider  rifles,  although  at  first  the 
new  soldiers  had  been  despised  by  the  insurgents 
on  account  of  their  low  origin.  The  siege  of 
Kumamoto  was  at  last  raised;  the  remnant  of  the 
defeated  forces  of  Saigo  retired  to  a  valley  near 
the  town  of  Kagoshima ;  Saigo  committed  suicide ; 
and  the  civil  war  ended  in  the  victory  of  the  gov- 
ernment in  September  1877,  seven  months  after 
its  outburst. 

This  civil  war  is  an  epoch-making  event  in  the 
history  of  the  Meidji  era,  in  the  sense  that  it  was 
a  death  blow  to  the  last  and  powerful  remnant 
force  of  feudalism,  the  influence  of  the  samurai. 
Though  the  samurai-soldiers  who  fought  on  the 
side  of  Saigo  were  very  few  in  number  compared 
with  the  host  of  the  samurai  within  the  whole 
empire,  and  though  not  a  few  samurai-soldiers 
fought  also  on  the  opposite  side,  still  it  was  clear 
that  the  insurgents  represented  the  interests  of 
the  samurai  as  a  class  better  than  the  govern- 
mental army,  and  the  defeat  of  the  former  had, 
on  the  prestige  of  the  class,  an  effect  quite  similar 
to  that  which  was  produced  in  Europe  of  the 


388  History  of  Japan 

later  Middle  Ages  by  the  use  of  firearms  and 
the  organisation  of  the  standing  army,  and  sig- 
nificantly reduced  the  traditional  influence  of 
knights  on  horseback.  It  is  for  this  reason  that 
the  democratisation  of  the  nation  markedly  set 
in  after  the  civil  war,  and  with  it  the  territorial 
particularism,  which  had  been  weakened  by  the 
Revolution,  has  been  rapidly  dying  away.  Po- 
litical parties  of  various  shades  began  to  be 
formed.  The  works  of  Montesquieu  and  Rous- 
seau were  translated  into  Japanese,  and  widely 
read  with  avidity.  The  cry  for  a  representative 
government  became  a  national  demand.  Against 
the  hesitating  government  riots  were  raised  here 
and  there.  To  sum  up  the  history  of  the  second 
decade  of  the  Meidji  era,  we  see  that  it  strik- 
ingly resembles  French  history  in  the  first  half 
of  the  nineteenth  century.  The  rise  of  the  in- 
fluence of  the  new-born  bourgeois  class  in  mod- 
ern Japan  may  be  said  to  have  dated  from  this 
epoch.  Europeanisation  in  manners  and  customs 
became  more  and  more  striking  year  by  year. 

What  is  unique  in  our  modern  history  is  that, 
parallel  with  the  growth  of  the  democratic  ten- 
dency in  the  nation,  the  imperial  prestige  effected 
a  remarkable  increase.  This  seemingly  contra- 
dictory phenomenon  may  be  explained  easily  by 
considering  how  our  present  notion  of  fidelity  to 
the  Emperor  has  evolved.  The  divine  authority 
of  the  Emperor  did  not  suffer  any  remarkable 
change  after  his  personal  regime  ceased,  though 


Epilogue  389 

his  political  prestige  had  been  eclipsed  by  the 
assumption  of  power  by  the  Fujiwara  nobles. 
Even  after  the  establishment  of  the  Shogunate, 
nobody  in  Japan  had  ever  though*  it  possible  that 
the  Emperor  could  be  placed  in  rank  equal  to 
or  under  a  Shogun  or  any  other  sort  of  dictator, 
however  virtually  powerful  he  might  have  been. 
Through  all  political  vicissitudes  the  Emperor 
has  remained  always  the  noblest  personage  in 
Japan,  and  in  this  sense  he  has  been  the  focus 
toward  which  the  heart  of  the  whole  nation  turned. 
The  relation  of  the  Emperor  to  the  people  at 
large,  during  these  periods  of  eclipse,  was  indi- 
rect. Between  them  intervened  the  Shogun  and 
the  daimyo  as  actual  immediate  rulers,  so  that 
fidelity  to  the  Emperor  had  been  spoken  of  only 
academically,  and  their  fidelity,  in  a  concrete  sense, 
had  been  solely  centered  in  their  immediate  mas- 
ter, who  reciprocated  it  by  the  protection  he  ex- 
tended directly  over  them.  Thus  fidelity  on  the 
one  hand  and  protection  on  the  other  hand  had 
been  conditioned  by  each  other,  and  because  the 
bond  was  naturally  an  essential  link  of  the  mili- 
tary regime,  it  was  strengthened  by  its  being 
handed  down  from  generation  to  generation.  In 
short,  the  fidelity  of  the  Japanese  may  be  said  to 
be  a  product  of  the  miliary  regime,  and  owes  its 
growth  to  the  hereditary  relation  of  vassalage. 
As  all  the  ideals  and  virtues  cherished  among  the 
samurai  class  used  to  be  considered  by  plebeians 
as  worthy  of  imitation,  if  practicable  in  their  own 


390  History  of  Japan 

circles,  fidelity  was  also  understood  by  them  in  the 
same  sense  as  among  the  military  circles,  that  is 
to  say,  as  a  soldierly  virtue  in  a  subordinate  to- 
ward his  superior.  So  it  grew  to  be  more  disci- 
plinary, self-sacrificing  and  devotional,  than  in  the 
times  before  the  military  regime.  This  condi- 
tion of  the  national  morals  had  continued  to  the 
end  of  the  Tokugawa  Shogunate,  with  occasional 
relaxations,  of  course.  But  now  that  the  Shogun- 
ate and  the  daimyo  were  eliminated  from  the  po- 
litical system,  the  foci  toward  which  the  fidelity 
of  the  people  had  been  turned  ceased  to  exist,  and 
the  fidelity  remained,  as  it  were,  to  be  a  cherished 
virtue  of  the  nation  though  without  a  goal.  It 
sought  for  a  new  focus,  looked  up  one  stage 
higher  than  the  Shogun,  and  was  glad  to  make  the 
Emperor  the  object  of  its  fervent  devotion.  Soon 
it  developed  almost  into  a  passion,  because  the 
nation  became  more  and  more  conscious  of  the 
necessity  of  a  well-centred  national  consolidation, 
and  it  could  find  nowhere  else  a  centre  more  fit 
for  it  than  the  Emperor.  His  prestige  could  in- 
crease in  this  way  pan  passu  with  the  growth  of 
the  democratic  spirit  in  the  nation.  It  is  not, 
therefore,  a  mere  traditional  preponderance,  but 
an  authority  having  its  foundation  in  modern  civil- 
isation. 

It  cannot  be  denied,  however,  that  history 
clothes  our  imperial  house  with  special  grandeur, 
which  might  not  be  sought  in  the  case  of  any  royal 
family  newly  come  to  power,  and  if  conservatism 


Epilogue  391 

would  have  a  firm  stand  in  Japan,  it  must  be  the 
conservatism  which  sprang  from  this  historical 
relation  of  the  people  to  the  Emperor.  This  ex- 
plains the  sudden  rise  of  the  conservative  spirit, 
which  at  once  changed  the  aspect  of  the  country 
at  the  end  of  the  second  decade  of  the  Meidji  era. 
It  happened  just  at  the  time  when  the  current  of 
Europeanisation  was  at  its  height  and  the  realisa- 
tion of  the  hope  of  the  progressives,  the  promul- 
gation of  the  Constitution  and  the  inauguration 
of  representative  government,  drew  very  near. 

In  February  1889  tne  Constitution  long  craved 
for  was  at  last  granted,  and  by  virtue  of  it  the 
first  Imperial  Diet  was  opened  the  next  year. 
This  adoption  of  the  representative  system  of  gov- 
ernment by  Japan  used  to  be  often  cited  as  a  rare 
example  of  the  wonderful  progress  of  a  nation 
not  European,  and  all  our  subsequent  national 
achievements  have  been  ascribed  by  foreigners  to 
this  radical  change  of  constitution.  Every  good 
and  every  evil,  however,  which  the  system  is  said 
to  possess,  has  been  fully  manifested  in  this  coun- 
try. We  have  since  been  continually  endeavour- 
ing to  train  and  accustom  ourselves  to  the  new 
regime,  but  our  experience  in  modern  party  gov- 
ernment is  still  very  meagre,  and  it  will  take  a 
long  time  to  see  all  classes  of  the  people  appro- 
priately interested  in  national  politics,  which  is 
a  requisite  condition  to  reaping  the  benefit  of  con- 
stitutional government  to  the  utmost.  At  present 
we  have  no  reason  to  regret,  on  the  contrary  much 


392  History  of  Japan 

reason  to  rejoice  at,  the  introduction  of  the  system. 

After  the  constitution  came  many  organic  laws, 
the  civil  and  penal  code,  and  so  forth,  in  order 
of  proclamation.  This  completion  of  the  appara- 
tus necessary  to  the  existence  of  the  modern  state 
improved  in  no  small  measure  the  position  of  our 
country  in  the  eyes  of  attentive  foreigners.  What, 
however,  contributed  most  of  all  to  the  abrogation 
of  the  rights  of  extraterritoriality  enjoyed  by  for- 
eigners on  Japanese  soil,  the  object  of  bitter  com- 
plaint and  pining  on  the  part  of  patriots,  was  the 
victory  won  by  our  army  in  the  war  against  China. 

Before  the  outbreak  of  the  Sinictf-Japanese 
war,  China  had  long  been  regarded  not  only  by 
Western  nations,  but  by  the  Japanese  themselves, 
as  far  above  our  country  in  national  strength,  not 
to  speak  of  the  superiority  of  wealth  as  well  as  of 
civilisation  in  general.  Though  the  victory  of 
the  expeditionary  troops  sent  by  Hideyoshi  over 
the  Chinese  reinforcements  despatched  by  the 
Emperor  of  the  Ming  to  succour  the  invaded  Ko- 
reans was  sufficient  to  wipe  off  the  military  humil- 
iation which  our  army  had  suffered  on  the  penin- 
sula nine  hundred  years  before,  and  had  much  to 
do  in  enhancing  the  national  self-confidence  against 
the  Chinese,  the  renewed  imitation  of  her  civilisa- 
tion during  the  Tokugawa  Shogunate  turned  the 
scale  again  in  favour  of  China  even  to  the  eyes 
of  the  Japanese  intelligents,  and  we  had  been  con- 
stantly overawed  by  the  influence  of  the  big  con- 
tinental neighbour.  So  that  the  formal  annexa- 


Epilogue  393 

tion  of  the  Loochoo  Islands  in  the  first  decade 
of  the  Meirji  era  against  the  opposing  Chinese 
claim  was  considered  to  be  a  great  diplomatic  vic- 
tory of  the  new  government.  The  failure  of  the 
French  expedition  added  also  to  the  credit  of  the 
unfathomable  force  of  the  Celestial  Empire.  The 
grand  Chinese  fleet  which  visited  our  ports  in  the 
year  previous  to  the  war  was  thought  to  be  more 
than  our  match,  and  made  us  feel  a  little  disqui- 
eted. Contrary  to  our  anticipation,  however,  bat- 
tle after  battle  ended  in  our  victory  in  the  war 
of  1894-1895,  and  Korea  was  freed  from  Chinese 
hegemony  by  the  treaty  of  Shimonoseki. 

Though  some  of  the  important  articles  of  the 
same  treaty  were  made  useless  by  the  intervention 
of  the  three  Western  powers,  the  war  proved  on 
the  whole  very  beneficial  to  our  country.  The 
growth  of  the  consciousness  of  the  national 
strength  emboldened  the  people  to  develop  their 
activity  in  all  directions.  Several  new  industries 
began  to  flourish.  The  national  wealth  increased 
remarkably  so  as  to  enable  the  government  to 
adopt  a  monometallic  currency  in  gold.  Educa- 
tion, high  as  well  as  low,  was  encouraged  by  the 
increase  of  various  new  schools  and  by  the 
strengthening  of  their  staffs.  We  laboured  very 
hard  for  the  ten  following  years,  and  then  the 
Russo-Japanese  war  took  place. 

It  was  indeed  fortunate  that  we  could  win  after 
all  in  the  war  in  which  we  put  our  national  des- 
tiny at  stake.  Not  only  in  this  war  with  Russia, 


394  History  of  Japan 

but  in  that  with  China  a  decade  before,  we  had 
been  by  no  means  sure  of  victory,  when  we  de- 
cided to  enter  into  them.  It  is  such  a  war  generally 
that  proves  salutary  to  the  victorious  party,  when, 
after  having  been  fought  with  difficulty,  it  ends 
in  a  way  better  than  had  been  anticipated.  It 
was  so  in  the  war  of  1894-1895,  and  was  not 
otherwise  in  that  waged  ten  years  later.  These 
military  successes,  needless  to  say,  increased  still 
more  the  splendour  of  the  imperial  prerogative 
already  magnificently  revived.  At  the  same  time 
they  countenanced  the  growth  of  conservatism. 
The  impetus,  however,  which  these  wars  gave  to 
the  general  activity  of  the  nation  necessitated  the 
people  betaking  themselves  to  the  study  and  imi- 
tation of  Western  civilisation.  And  this  European- 
isation,  direct  or  through  America,  tended  to 
make  the  nation  more  and  more  progressive. 
Thus  conservatism  in  recent  Japan  has  been 
marching  hand  in  hand  with  liberalism,  nay,  even 
with  radicalism,  each  alternately  outweighing  the 
other.  This  is  why  present  Japan  has  appeared 
to  be  lacking  in  stability,  especially  in  the  eyes  of 
foreign  observers. 

The  years  immediately  succeeding  the  Russo- 
Japanese  war  formed  the  culminating  period  of 
the  glorious  era  of  Meidji,  and  also  a  turning- 
point  of  the  national  history.  Up  to  that  time 
foreign  nations  had  been  lavishing  their  kindness 
in  the  education  of  the  novice  nation,  who  seemed 
to  them  to  be  vet  in  her  teens  on  account  of  hav- 


Epilogue  395 

ing  just  entered  into  the  concert  of  the  world  as 
a  passive  hearer.  They  did  not  know  what  would 
become  of  Japan,  brought  up  and  instructed  in 
this  way.  In  military  affairs  the  English  were 
our  first  masters,  then  came  the  French  and  the 
German.  In  the  navy,  the  Dutch  followed  by  the 
English  were  our  instructors.  In  the  sphere  of 
legislation,  the  first  advisers  were  the  French,  to 
whom  the  Germans  succeeded.  The  latter  also 
taught  us  their  science  of  medicine,  which  to 
study  in  Japan  the  German  language  has  become 
the  first  requisite.  Besides  what  has  been  enum- 
erated above,  knowledge  of  all  branches  of  indus- 
tries, arts,  and  sciences  has  been  introduced  into 
our  country  in  the  highly  advanced  stage  of  the 
brilliant  century.  Who  would  have  dreamt,  how- 
ever, of  the  victory  of  the  Japanese  over  the  Rus- 
sians in  January  of  1904?  In  the  war,  it  is  true, 
a  great  many  foreigners  sympathised  with  the 
cause  of  the  Japanese,  simply  because  all  by- 
standers are  unconsciously  wont  to  take  the  side 
of  the  weaker.  The  fall  of  Port  Arthur  and  the 
annihilation  of  the  Russian  navy  on  the  Sea  of 
Japan  were  beyond  all  expectation.  They  now 
began  to  think  that  they  might  be  also  taken  un- 
awares by  us,  as  they  thought  the  Russians  were, 
forgetting  that  they  had  ignored  to  study  the  Jap- 
anese. They  rather  repented  that  they  had  un- 
derestimated the  real  Japanese  unduly,  and  there- 
by they  have  fallen  into  the  error  of  overestima- 
tion.  We  do  not  think  that  a  sheer  victory  on  a 


396  History  of  Japan 

battlefield  can  in  any  case  be  taken  as  a  measure 
of  the  progress  of  civilisation  in  the  victor.  More- 
over, in  what  field  could  we  have  been  able  to 
beat  any  European  nation  except  in  battle,  if  we 
could  beat  her  at  all?  Almost  all  of  our  cultural 
factors  we  have  borrowed  from  foreign  countries, 
and  therefore  they  are  of  later  introduction,  so 
that  they  could  not  be  easily  brought  by  our  imi- 
tation, however  adroit  it  might  be,  to  a  stage 
nearly  so  high  as  they  had  reached  in  their  origi- 
nal homes.  But  as  to  the  art  of  fighting  only,  we 
have  come  to  practise  it  since  the  old  times,  and 
during  the  successive  Shogunates  it  had  been  the 
calling  most  honoured  and  followed  by  us  at  the 
expense  of  other  acquirements.  In  short,  it  was 
the  speciality  of  old  Japan,  so  that  our  success  in 
arms  could  not  testify  to  the  sudden  jump  in  other 
branches  of  our  civilisation.  Those  foreigners, 
however,  who  had  been  accustomed  to  judge  us 
from  afar,  looked  only  at  the  scientific  and  me- 
chanical side  of  modern  war,  of  which  we  had 
availed  ourselves,  and  surmised  that  if  we  could 
stand  excellently  the  test  in  this  department,  we 
must  certainly  have  surpassed  what  they  had  ex- 
pected of  us  in  all  respects.  This  surmise,  which 
they  felt  not  very  agreeably,  they  flatly  imputed 
to  our  dissimulation  and  feigning,  and  branded 
them  as  our  national  vices,  instead  of  attributing 
the  miscalculation  to  their  self-deception  and  ig- 
norance as  regards  things  Japanese.  On  the  con- 
trary, we  have  had  never  the  least  intention  to  de- 


Epilogue  397 

ceive  any  foreigner  in  the  estimation  of  the  merit 
of  what  we  have  achieved.  Would  it  not  be  ridic- 
ulously absurd  to  assume  the  existence  of  such  a 
tendency  in  any  living  nation  in  the  world? 

We  have  been  thus  overestimated  and  at  the 
same  time  begun  to  be  somewhat  disliked  by  those 
short-sighted  observers  in  foreign  countries  after 
our  successful  war  with  Russia.  The  pet  nation  of 
the  whole  world  of  yesterday  was  turned  sud- 
denly into  the  most  suspected  and  dangerous 
nation  of  to-day!  There  have  been  many  mission- 
aries who  had  personal  experience  of  our  coun- 
try, owing  to  their  residence  here  for  years,  pro- 
fessing that  they  have  tried  their  utmost  to  plead 
our  cause.  Unfortunately,  their  defence  of  us 
has  not  availed  much,  for  a  great  part  of  them 
are  used  to  depict  us  as  a  nation  still  evolving. 
Evolving  they  say,  for  our  recent  national  pro- 
gress is  too  evident  a  fact  to  be  refuted,  and  they 
wish  to  ascribe  it  to  their  fruitful  endeavours. 
Evolving,  they  say  repeatedly,  for  they  are  fain 
to  show  that  there  is  still  remaining  in  Japan  a 
wide  field  reserved  for  them  to  work,  lest  their 
ralson  d'etre  in  this  country  should  otherwise  be 
lost  forever.  In  fact,  we  are  now  far  enough 
advanced  as  a  nation  as  not  to  require  the  tutelage 
of  the  missionaries  of  recent  times. 

I  regret  that  we  have  among  us  a  certain  num- 
ber of  typical  braggarts,  who  unfortunately 
abound  in  every  country,  and  their  shameless 
bluffing  has  often  caused  astonishment  to  unpre- 


398  History  of  Japan 

judiced  observers  in  foreign  countries.  Neverthe- 
less, we  as  a  nation  are  neither  far  better  nor  far 
worse  than  any  other  in  the  world.  To  remain 
as  a  petrified  state,  with  plenty  of  well-preserved 
relics  of  all  ages,  is  what  we  cannot  bear  for  our 
country.  We  know  well  that  a  nation  which  pro- 
duces sight-seers  must  be  incomparably  happier 
and  more  praiseworthy  than  that  which  furnishes 
quaint  objects  for  show  to  please  those  sight-seers. 
If  there  be  any  other  nation  that  wishes  to  make 
its  home  a  peepshow  for  others,  let  it  do  so.  That 
is  not  our  business.  What  we  aspire  to  earnestly 
as  our  national  ideal  is  to  make  our  country  able 
to  stand  shoulder  to  shoulder  with  the  senior 
Western  nations  in  contributing  to  the  advance 
and  welfare  of  world  civilisation.  We  shall  pro- 
ceed toward  this  goal,  however  fluctuating  foreign 
opinion  about  us  may  be  for  years  or  ages  to  come. 


INDEX 


Abe,  family,  93 

Aborigines,  28 

Adoption,  346 

Adzumakagami,  322 

Agriculture,  78 

Aidzu,   37yff. 

Ainu,  3off.,  66f.,  yoff.,  82ff., 
86ff.,  91,  104*1.,  114,  119, 
i22ff.,  125,  130,  143,  147, 
153,  157,  175,  183,  i92ff., 
204,  237ff. 

Alienation  of  land,  346 

Allod-holders,    Prankish,    144 

Alphabet,  167,  324 

Amalgamation  of  cultures,  335, 
347.  See  Assimilation  of 
cultures 

America,    371  ff.,   394 

Amita,  172 

Amusements,  211 

Ancient  regime,  356 

Annals,  364 

Ansai,  Yamazaki,  359 

Anti-Semitism,  344 

Apaches,  254 

Archaeology,   29 

Archery,  205,  312 

Architecture,   i3off.,  296 

Aristocracy,   62,   246,  250,   343 

Armour,   314*1. 

Art,  i29ff.,  261,  331,  345 

Artisans,   288ff. 

^Esop,  Fables  of,  262 

Ashigaru,  304 

Ashikaga,  age  of,  214,  222ff., 
227,  231,  234ff.,  238,  241, 
243,  2456%  248,  251,  2s8ff., 


263,  274,  284ff.,  2968.,  310, 
312,  316,  318,  320,  328,  331, 
344,  350,  36off. 

Ashikaga,  family,  2o6ff.,  210, 
2i5ff.,  233,  268ff.,  307 

Ashikaga  Shogunate,  187,  207, 
2ioff.,  215*1.,  223,  227*?.,  242, 
252,  257,  261,  264,  268,  307, 
320 

Ashikaga,  town,  227 

Assessment,  298 

Assimilation  of  cultures,  150. 
See  Amalgamation  of  cul- 
tures 

Astronomy,  1075.,  349 

Augury,  64,  139 

Auspices,  139 

Austria,  213 

Ave  Maria,  173 


B 

Balkan,  68 

Ballad,  129,  134 

Ball,  kicking  of,  237 

Barons,  English,  213 

Barriers,  291,  342 

Bartering,  84*?. 

Biographies,  365 

Bismarck,   356 

Biwa,  instrument,  162 

Biwa,  Lake,  ngff. 

Block-engraver,  233*!. 

Blood-ties,  89 

Body-guard,  of  Shogun,  2946?. 

See  Hatamoto 
Books,   23 iff.,  348,  358 
Bookstores,  325 
Botany,   349 


399 


400 


Index 


Bourbons,  282 

Bourgeois,  237,  245,  250,  332, 
345,  388 

Brewers,  244 

Bricks,    131 

Britons,  69 

Buddhism,  8,  96,  986%  109, 
118,  130,  i45ff.,  162,  i68ff., 
233,  235,  237,  2&r  262, 
273 ff.,  35iff.,  359,  3*4 

Buffoons,   244 

Buffoons,    262,     273  ff.,     35  iff-, 

359,  384 
Bulgarians,  68 
Bunjingwa,  332 
Byobu,  250 


Caesars,  154 

Calendar,   io7ff. 

Calligraphy,    323,   325,   331 

Calvinism,  189 

Cape  Colony,  70 

Carlovingians,   94 

Carpets,   133 

Caste-system,   61,   343 

Castles,  feudal,  237 

Catholic,  170,  350 

Cattle,  78 

Cavalry,  304 

Celibacy,  351 

Census,  n6ff.,  125,  144 

Centralisation,     isff.,     89,     92, 

95ff.,  22iff. 
Chaotic    period    of    Japanese 

history,  224 
Chen-Shou,   Chinese  historian, 

59 

Chikafusa,  Kitabatake,  321 
China,    7,    99,    106,    159,    195, 
225ff.,  228ff.,  234,  237,  24iff., 

245,  392 

Chinese,  people,  233,  348 
Chinese  art,  129,  249 
Chinese  Buddhists,  226 
Chinese    civilisation    6ff.,     57, 

60,  96,   losff.,  227,  253,  261, 

348,  37i 


Chinese  colonists,  58 

Chinese  language,  6of.,  i66ff., 

235,  324,  362,  366 
Chinese    literature,    129,    134, 

152,    227,    230,    232ff.,    248, 

32iff.,  327,  358 
Chinese  philosophy,  358 
Chivalry,  162 
Christianity,  245,  25iff.,  262ff., 

278,  280,  296,  348,  351,  353, 

385 

Chronicles,   53*?.,   61,   277,   364 

Chronology,  107,  235ff. 

Church,  352 

Churche,  i95ff. 

Chu-tse,  352,  359,  366 

Cities,  growth  of,  223,  230,  241 

Civil  Code,  392 

Civil  war,  between  two 
branches  of  Imperial  fam- 
ily, 240,  255ff.,  355 

Class-system,    140,   288ff.,   343, 

347 

Classicism,    224 
Clay,  types  made  of,  320 
Clients,  81,  87,  9off.,  115 
Climate,  2iff. 
Cochin  China,   323 
Codification,  123 
Coins,  23 iff.,  298,  312 
Common  people,  141,  145,  289, 

328,  389.    See  Plebeians 
Communication,   236,   238,   280 
Community,  religious,  172 
Community,  self-providing,  84 
Compensation-bonds,   385 
Condottieri,   242,  277 
Confiscation,  345 
Confucius,    8,    232,    234,    320, 

3286%  352,  358ff. 
Connoisseurs,  244,  285 
Conscription,  125,  381,  387 
Conservatism,    163.    269,    390, 

394 

Constitution,  39iff. 
Convent,  233 

Conventionalism,  193,  272 
Corporations,  84 


Index 


401 


Corvee,   116 

Court-ladies,    152 

Court-musicians,   135 

Court-nobles,  Courtiers,  131, 
140,  i52ff.,  156,  2O4ff.,  2ioff., 
215,  2i8ff.,  227,  237,  252, 
255,  272,  306,  3o8ff.,  335, 
338,  360,  374^,  38sff. 

Court-philosophers,   352 

Craft-groups.     See  Groups 

Crafts-men,  340 

Crown  prince,  95,  311 

Crusades,  226 

Culture,  238,  335,  347 

Curios,  244 

Currency,  system  of,  298.  See 
Monetary  system  and  Coins 

Cycle,  chronological,  io7ff. 

D 

Daibutsu,  136,  144 
Daimyo,     225,     236ff.,     29off., 
T.,      307,      3ioff., 
33iff.,    337ff., 

358ff.,  380,  389ff. 
Dai-Nihon-shi,  364 
Dancing,  135 
Dark  Ages,  224 
Date,  family,  303 
Deities,  168,  170 
Democratisation,  388ff.,  390 
Deshima,  348,  371 
Diadochi,  279 
Dialect,  315,  341 
Diplomatists,  244,  301,  349 
Disintegration  of  the  Empire, 

216 

Dismemberment,    lof 
Dissimulation,   396 
District-governors,    116 
Djito,  iSiff.,  202 ff.,  2i2ff.,  225, 

294,  297 

Doctrinaires,  373 
Documents,  364 
Dog-shooting,    205,   294ff.,   314 
Domains,    8off.,    9off.,    94,    97, 

306,  330 


Domicile,  340 
Dramatist,  333 

Dutchmen,  348^,  350,  353,  371, 
394 


Earthenware,  29 

East   Chin   dynasty   of  China, 

99 

East  Roumelia,  68 
Education,     235,     238,     289^., 

358,  394ff. 

Educational  Museum,  327 
Eighty    Thousand,    294.      See 

Hatamoto 
Elders,  294 
El  Dorado,  265 
Embargo,  291 

Emperor,    8off.,    95,    101,    108, 
223,    3o6ff.,    327,    365,   367ff., 
384,  389ff. 
Empire  style,  285 
Empress,  141,  310,  336 
England,  69 
Englishmen,  199,  395 
Epic,   130,   134 
Etiquette,  145,  25off. 
Europe,  224,  371  ff. 
European      civilisation,      262, 

347,  348,  353 
European  history,  12 
Europeanisation,  388,  391,   394 
Europeans,   347 
Excavation  in  northern  China, 

130 

Executioners,  343 
Ex-Emperor,  311 
Extradition,  340 
Extra-territoriality,  392ff. 


Facsimile,  325 

Family  life,  256*?. 

Farmers,   340.     See  Peasants 

Fetichism,  272 

Feudalism,  i2ff.,  302,  379,  387 


402 


Index 


Feudal  Japan,  383 
Feudatories,     225,     237,     242, 

247,   293ff.,  351 
Fighting,  396ff. 
Fire-arms,  243,  312,  388 
Fiscal-system,   306 
Florence,  241 

Flower-trimming,    i32ff.,   244 
Foreign    relations,   Foreigners, 

326,   373 
Forest,  305 
Formosa,  23,  27 
Fortress,  296 
France,  69,  282 
Freeholders  of  land,  81 
Freemen,  81 
French,  295 

French  Revolution,   356 
Fu-Chien,    Chinese    potentate, 

96 

Fudai,  294ff.,  296 
Fujiwara,  age  of,  i56ff.,  163(1., 

174,  177*1.,  i86ff.,  248,  254ff-, 

263,  272,  275,  306,  389 
Fujiwara,    family,    i4off.,    1:49, 

i52ff.,  202,  204,  218,  306,  336 
Fukuwara,    Settsu,    159.      See 

Kobe 
Fushimi,  3216*.,  3765. 


Gemmyo,  Empress,   53,   i3off. 
Genealogical  records,   337 
Generalissimo,  to  chastise  the 

Ainu,  183 
Genji-monogatari,      152,     248, 

261,  360 

Genko-shakusho,  235 
Gentlemen,  328 
Gentry,  330,  335 
German  Confederation,  329 
German  Empire,   194,  356 
German  Language,  395 
Germans,  79,  94,  129,  395 
Germany,  68,  213,  239 
Go-Daigo,  Emperor,  205,  306, 

321 


Goetz  von  Berlichingen,  246 
Go-Kenin,  179,  202,  294 
Go-Midzunowo,  Emperor,  319, 

321 

Go-Sanjo,    Emperor,    178 
Government,    signification    of, 

177^ 

Go-Y6zei,  Emperor,   3195. 
Great  Britain,  194 
Great  Japan,   History  of,   365 
Greece,  iof.,  136 
Gregorian   Calendar,    381 
Groups,     system     of,     62,     80, 

82ff.,  88,  92,  115 
Guild,    of    Medieval    Europe, 

84 
Guns,  243,  312 


H 


Hachiman,  of  Tsurugaoka, 
177 

Hai-nan,  island,  65 

Haito,  72,  83,  86 

Hakata,  190,  223,  226,  228ff., 
233,  241 

Hakodate,  378 

Haniwa,  129 

Hanseatic  towns,  239 

Harakiri,  287*!. 

Harps,  133 

Hatamoto,  295,  305*!.,  310,  376 

Hei-an,  146.    See  Kyoto 

Heike,  162.     See  Taira 

Heike-monogatari,   162 

Hidehira,   Fujiwara,   192 

Hidetada,  Tokugawa,  350 

Hideyoshi,  Toyotomi,  267,  269, 
279**.,  285,  293ff.,  298ff., 
3o6ff.,  319**.,  351,  358,  392 

Hieta-no-Are,  53f. 

Highlanders,   157 

Higo,  province,  72 

Hikwan,  214,  217.  See  Prote- 
ges 

Historiography,  363,  3651". 

History,  as  science,  4ff.,  73 


Index 


403 


History,    study    of,    269,    349, 

358,  364ff. 

Hitachi,  province,  296 
Hiyei,      Mount,     Monasteries, 

275.     See  Yenryakuji 
Hizen,  province,  376 
Hogen,  era,  160 
Hohenstaufen,  219 
Hojo,  family,  184(1.,  188,  201  ff., 

2O5,    2O7,    212,    227,    256 

Hokke,  Buddhist  sect,  189,  274. 

See  Nichiren-shu 
Hokkaido,  Island,  23,  27,  32ff., 

119,  237ff.,  370,  378 
Holland,   378.     See  Dutchmen 
Holy  Roman  Empire,  295 
Homestead,  303 
Homicide,  288 
Hohen,   173*!.,  189,  234 
Hongwanji,  Temple,  276 
Honto,   Main   Island,   31,   6jt.f 

119,  i22ff.,  192,  302,  316,  344, 

378 

Horsemanship,  133,  304,  313 
Horses,  78,  116 
Hosokawa,  family,  2406?. 
Hostages,  257,  300,  338 
Hsiao-king,  258,  319**., 
Humanism,    226,    249(1.,    260, 

272,  317,  328ff.,  331,  333 
Hunting,  133 
Hyogo,  241,  374.    See  Kobe 


Ideographs,  57 

Idolatry,  273 

Idzu,  province,  160 

Idzumi,  province,  239ff. 

Iki,  island  and  province,   121, 

197 
Ikko-shu,  274,  351.     See  Jodo- 

shinshu 

Illiteracy,  28,  6iff. 
Illustrations,  325 
Imagawa,  family,  259 
Imitation,  129*?. 


Immigrants,  28,  34,  76,  78,  81, 

89,  9i»  99ff- 
Immunity,   142 
Imperial  court,  199,  227 
Imperial  Diet,  391 
Imperial  family,  62,  Syff.,  9off., 

276,  336 

Imperial  household,  307,  31  iff. 
Imperial  power,  92,  355 
Imperial  residences,  114 
Imperialists,  376ff. 
Impurity   of   blood,   344.     See 

Pollution 
Iname,  Soga,  101 
Indifferentism,  352 
Individualism,   165,  2466* ,  261, 

264 

Indoor-life,  132,  249 
Infantry,  304,  312 
Inland    Sea,    25*!.,    159,     161, 

230ff. 

Invincible  Armada,  199 

Iron  age,  46f. 

Iruka,  Soga,  112 

Ise,  province  and  Shrines,  102, 

238ff. 

Ise-monogatari,  261 

Italian  cities,  226 

Italians,  261,  350 

Italy,  285 

Iwaki,  province,  104 

Iwami,  province,  305 

Iwashirp,  province,  104 

lyeyasu,  Tokugawa,  267, 
28iff.,  293,  296,  309,  3i8ff., 
32iff.,  35off.,  358,  364,  368 


Japan,  climate  of,  21  ff. 
Japan,  historic,  24,  5 iff.,  75 
Japan,  Northern,  26ff.,  70 
Japan,  Sea  of,  24,  119 
Japan,  Southern,  26ff. 
Japanese,   people,   9,   33ff.,   37, 

45,  61,  65,  75,  i22ff.,  164 
Japanese  architecture,  39ff. 
Japanese  art,  130 


404 


Index 


Japanese  authors,  234 
Japanese  history,  iff.,  10,  i8f., 

5°,  75,  78 

Japanese   language,   35,    167 
Japanese      literature,       129!!., 

i33ff.,    151,    i66ff.,  249,   261, 

323,  36off. 
Jesuits,  264!?. 
Jews,  343 

Jimmu,  Emperor,  115 
Jingo-shotoki,  321 
Jingu-kogo,      Empress,      59ff., 

93ff.,  98 
Jodo-shinshu,     Buddhist     sect, 

245,  274.    See  Ikko-shu 
Jodo-shu,    Buddhist    sect,    174, 

189,  190 

Jokyu,  era,  185,  205 
Jomei,  Emperor,  102 
Joruri,   162 

Joyei,  era  and  Laws,  185,  235 
Jujutsu,  3135. 


Kachi,  304 

Kaempfer,  Engelhardt,  284 

Kaga,   province,  293,  299,  303 

Kagoshima,  233,  387 

Kakemono,  249 

Kamako,  Nakatomi.  See  Ka- 
matari 

Kamakura,  156,  176,  191, 
2040%  207,  222ff.,  225ff.,  272 

Kamakura,  period,  174,  202, 
2i4ff.,  224,  232,  234,  237, 
250,  254ff.,  274,  294,  296,  383 

Kamakura  Shogunate,  156, 
*75»  J77»  179ff-»  i82ff.,  i86ff., 
193,  i97ff.,  212,  214,  2546% 
259,  285,  294,  307,  309,  322, 

383 
Kamatari,     Nakatomi,     nzff., 

140.     See  Fujiwara 
Kana,  167 

Kanazawa,  Musashi,  227 
Kanera,  Ichijo,  218 
Kanetsugu,  Naoye,  319,  321 


Kano  school  of  painters,  347, 

249,  33i 

Keichu,  priest,  361 
Khubilai,   Mongol  Khan,   198, 

200 

Kimmei,  Emperor,  96,  100,  101 
Kiso,  forest  of,  305 
Kiyomori,    Taira,    1586?.,    163, 

181,  272 

Kiyowara,  family,  149 
Knights,  388 
Knights-errant,  242 
Knights-immediate,   295 
Kobe,  159,  241,  374 
Kojiki,  53f.,  362 
Kojiki-den,  362 
Kokinshu,  360 
Koku,  299ff.,  302ff. 
Kokuri,    60,    96,    99,    no,    121, 

196.    See  Korea 
Kokyoku,  Empress,  113 
Komei,  Emperor,  374 
Korea,  23,  27,  34,  57ff.,  96,  196, 

228,    237,    263,    280,    3i9ff., 

386ff. 

Koreans,    197 
Koropokkuru,  30 
Koto,  133 

Kotoku,  Emperor,  113 
Kotsuke,  province,  91 
Koya,     Mount     and     Monas- 
teries, 233,  275ff. 
Kreis-institution,  213 
Kugatachi,  65 
Kujiki,  55ff. 
Kumamoto,  3876^. 
Kumaso,  66,  72 
Kuni,  81 
Kutara,    56,    97ff.,    no,    I2off. 

See  Korea 
Kwai-fu-so,  134 
Kwammu,  Emperor,  i46ff. 
Kwanto,  192 
Kyoto,   ii9ff.,    i46ff.,   152,   157, 

159,     161,     166,     i74ff.f    181, 

1 86,     190,     191,     199,    2046% 

212,    2l6,    2l8ff.,    222ff.,    225, 
227ff.,    232ff.,    235,    238»    240, 


Index 


405 


245,   268,   2776?.,    306,    309*!., 

323,  327,  33i,  333,  335.  364, 
374,  376ff.,  378,  380 
Kyushu,    23,   33,   49,    66ft,    72, 
91,    121,    197,   223,   228,   230, 
243,  302,  315,  386 


Labour,  agricultural,  84 

Labour,  manual,  84 

Lacquering,  243 

Land-appropriation,  by  war- 
riors, 154 

Land-distribution,    nsff.,    125 

Landholders,  80,  870*.,  i4iff. 

Landlords,  87ff.,  90,  115 

Lands,  confiscation  of,  91 

Lands,  Crown,  80 

Lands,  granted  by  Emperors, 
80 

Lands,  new  exploration  of,  84, 
87,  goff. 

Lands,  private,  80 

Landscapes,  166,  249 

Land-survey,  279,  298 

Land-tenure,  214 

Learning,  326**.,  345 

Leaseholders,  141 

Legislation,  393 

Legisimism,  367 

Levantine  trade,  226 

Library,  227.     See  Kanazawa 

Liegnitz,  battle  of,  198 

Lieutenant,  of  Shogun  at  Ky- 
oto, 207 

Lieutenant,  of  djito,  203 

Limes,  69 

Lineage,  299,  303,  337 

Literati,  61,  149,  237,  247,  261, 
325,  328,  332,  345 

Longevity,  64 

Loo-choo,     islands,     23,     276*., 

241,  393 
Lung-yii,  232ff. 

Lutheranism,   189  t, 

Lyang,  dynasty  in  China,   100 
Lyao,  river,  57 


M 

Mabuchi,  Kamo,  361 
Magatama,  42f. 
Majordomo,  94 
Makura-no-soshi,  152 
Mannyo-shu,  134,  36of. 
Manors,  i82ff.,  211,  214,  2i8ff., 

223,  252ff.,  279,  297,  310 
Manuscripts,  historical,  325 
Market,  65,  66 

Marriage,  211,  316,  335**.,  343 
Maximilian     I.,     Emperor     of 

Germany,  213 

Mayeta,   family,  293,  299,  303 
Mediatised     princes    of    Ger- 
many, 295 

Medicine,  234,  348,  394 
Meidji,  Emperor,  374 
Meidji,  era,  167,  283,  293,  335, 

343,  354f.,  357,.378ff-,  3«7 
Meidji,     Restoration    of,     146, 
367,  379*?.,  382ff.,  38sff.,  391, 
393,  394 

Mercantilism,  292 
Mercenary,  286 
Merchants,      8,      241  ff.,      240, 

2895,.   333ff.,   340 
Merovingians,  94 
Mesalliance,  335ff. 
Metallic  types,  321.    See 

Types 

Middle  Ages,  343,  351,  3-88 
Migration,  28,  339ff. 
Mikawa,  province,  259 
Militarism,  337 
Military  affairs,  395 
Military  class,  156.    See  War- 
rior 
Military     regime,     315,     317, 

326ff.,  330,  333ff.,  389 
Military  sciences,  349 
Military  service,   143,  381 
Military  system,   1246.,  203 
Mimana,  a  Korean  state,   120 
Minamoto,  family,   156,   1636% 
166,   175,  186,  188,  202,  205, 
213,  215,  255,  309 


406 


Index 


Mines,  305 

Ming,   dynasty  in  China,   228, 

229,  263,  288 
Mino,  province,  268 
Misapprehension,   383 
Misogi,  43 f.,  63 
Missionaries,     145,     245,     262, 

264*?.,    278ff.,    284,    327,    351, 

370,  397ff. 

Mito,  296,  (364ff.,  377 
Mitsukuni,  Tokugawa,  364 
Miyake,  9off. 
Modernisation,   27off. 
Mommu,  Emperor,  13 iff. 
Momoyama,  style  of  art,  285 
Monetary     system,     381,     393. 

See  Currency 
Mongols,    8,    195,    i97ff.,    206, 

227ff.,  381 

Monometallic  system,   393 
Mononobe,  family,  93,  ioiff. 
Monzayemon,   Chikamatsu,  333 
Morals,  2539.,   359,   390 
Moriya,  Mononobe,   102 
Movable    types,    3196%    323ff. 

See  Types 
Municipal    councillors   of    Sa- 

kai,  241 

Municipal  freedom,  241 
Murasaki-shikibu,    152,   248 
Mushashi,  province,  282 
Musicians,  243 
Mutsu,  province,  119,  147,  161, 

192,  303 
Myths,  362 


N 


Nagasaki,   225,   305,   348f. 

Nagato,  province,  230,  376 

Nagoya,  296 

Naivete,  363 

Naka-no-Oye,  Prince.  See  Ten- 

chi,  Emperor 
Nakatomi,  family,  93.  113.  See 

Fujiwara 
Naniwa,  147.    See  Osaka 


Nara,  age  of,  1326%  135*?.,  144, 

140,  3H 

Nara,  town,  233 

National  consciousness,   143 

National  gods,  384.  See  Dei- 
ties 

Naturalism,  249 

Navigation,  120 

Navy,  395 

Negoro,  Temple  of,  276 

NembutsUj  I72ff. 

Netsuke,  331 

Nichiren,  priest,  189 

Nichiren-shu,  Buddhist  sect, 
189,  274,  351.  See  Hokke 

Nihongi,  536%  62,  107,  129, 
320,  36if. 

Niigata,  67,  305 

Nine  Years,  War  of,  156 

Nintoku,  Emperor,  115 

Nishijin,  243 

Nobility,  military,  294 

Nobles,  131,  140,  142,  i44ff.f 
148,  isiff.,  i83ff. 

Nobunaga,  Oda,  2675.,  274ff., 
282,  308,  332,  351 

Nobuzane,  246 

No-dancers,  345 

Norinaga,  Motoori,  36if. 

Norito,  362 

Norizane,  Uyesugi,  233 

Normans,  in  Sicily,  48 

Notes,  312 

Novelists,  361 

Novels,  249,  261,  360 

Nutari,  67,  71 

O 

Occupations  of  ancient  Japa- 
nese, 78 

Oda,  family,  259,  267!?.,  285 

Odawara,  233 

Officers,  153,  303 

Officials,  io8ff.,  304,  3i2ff., 
328,  339 

Ohmi,  province,  116,  119,  218, 

J20 


Index 


407 


Ohmi  Laws,  116 

Ohnin,  era   and  civil  war  of, 

2i6ff.,    232,    243,    257,    307 
Oh-no-Yasumaro,   53 
Ohsumi,  province,  33,  126 
Ohtomo,  family,  93,  101 
Ohtsu,  ii9ff.,  147 
Ondo,  strait  of,  159 
One-six,  Lord,  225 
On-no-Imoko,   106,   niff. 
Orders,  mendicant,  173 
Organic  laws,  391 
Orleans,  family,  282 
Ornaments,  29 

Orthodox,  Greek  Church,  170 
Osaka,     114,     147,     225,    279, 
^  3326%  361,  376 
Ouchi,  family,  23off.,  240 
Outdoor-life  in  Nara  age,  132 
Overestimation,  395 
Owari,  province,  268,  296 


Pacific,  Ocean,  24,  ngS. 
Painters,  243,  345 
Painting,  130,  249,  331 
Pastimes,  literary,  210,  237 
Peasants,  288ff.     See  Farmers 
Peasants'  War,  246 
Pedigrees,  337 
Pedlers,  290 
Peerage  list,  338 
Penal  code,  392 
Peninsular  states,  112 
Period-name,   114 
Philologists,  36if. 
Physicians,  326,  345. 
Picts,  69 
Picts'  Wall,  69 

Pilgrims  to  Ise  Shrines,  2386:. 
Pirates,  i97ff.,  228,  236 
Plays,  religious,  170 
Plebeians,    2890%    344ff.,    347, 

387 

Plutocrats,   333 
Poems,  i34ff. 
Poetry,  331 


Poets,   243,   361 
Political  development,  16 
Political  parties,  389 
Politics,  358f. 
Pollution,  63f.,  343 
Population,    126 
Porcelain-making,  243 
Port  Arthur,  395 
Portrait-painting,  247ff. 
Portuguese,  243,  350 
Pottery,  44 

Preachers,  Buddhist,  168 
Predominant    stock    of    Japa- 
nese, 87ff.,  93 
Prefectures,   380 
Prehistoric,  5off. 
Pre-Meidji  regime,  356 
Prerogative,  imperial,  307 
Preservation,  270 
Priests,  Buddhist,  208,  326 
Primogeniture,    92,    202,    337, 

347 

Printing,  23 iff. 
Privilege,  343 
Proletariat,  245 
Proteges,  214,  217 
Proto-historic,   50 
Provinces,  81,  90,  115 
Provincial  governors,  114,  115, 

1 80 

Prussia,  275,  329 
Publication,  323 
Public  land,  i4iff. 
Publishers,  325 
Purchase-system,  345 


Q 

Quattrocento,  261,  285 


Race,  i,  21,  27,  75ff.,  8z 
Rainy  season,  24 
Ransoms,  286 
Rationalism,  352,  366 


408 


Index 


Reading  circle,  324 
Realistic,  248 
Recitation,  162 
Red  tape,  272 
Reformation,  246,  285,  328 
Reformed  Church,  350 
Reforms,  138 
Regency,  148,  306,  309 
Religion,  117,  i68ff. 
Religious  community,   172 
Religious  movements,   18 
Religious  pictures,  246 
Renaissance,     236,     251,     261, 

28sff.,  328 
Renga,  210,  237 
Representative    government, 

39i 

Reprinting  of  books,  3i9ff. 
Restoration  of  Bourbons,  355 
Restoration  of  Meidji,  283,  355 
Restoration  of  Stuarts,  355 
Retainers,  183,  188,  197,  i99ff. 

202,   205,   2i3ff.,   233,   294ff., 

301 

Revenue,  143 
Rhetoric,  331 
Rhine,  68 

Rice,  41  ff.,  1 1 6,  297ff. 
Richu,  Emperor,  57 
Rigorism,  366f. 
Rikuchu  province,  147 
Rochu,  294 
Rococo,  285 
Roman  Empire,  125 
Roses,  War  of,  206 
Rousseau,  388 
Rowing,  133 
Rumination,  9 
Russians,  370 
Russo-Japanese   War,   393ff. 


S 


Sado,     island     and    province, 

305 

Saga,  Emperor,  250 
Saghalien,  23,  27 


Sakai,  city,  223,  225,  230, 
233ff.,  243,  277,  305,  332ff. 

Sakanouye  -  no  -  Tamuramaro, 
147 

Sake,  244 

Salic  law,  202 

Samurai,  288,  295,  3Oiff., 
3i2ff.,  318,  327ff.,  335,  339ff., 
380,  383,  385,  387,  389 

Sanetomo,    Minamoto,    226 

San-kuo-chi,   59ff.,  71,   84,  99 

Satsuma,  province,  23,  33,  72, 
126,  238,  303,  376,  386 

Schools,  358 

Scipios,  154 

Scotland,  69 

Screens,  250.     See  Byobu 

Scribes,  57,  6 if.,  82 

Scroll-paintings,   165,  246,  249 

Sculptures,  130,  136,  164!?.,  384 

Seasonal  changes,  24ff. 

Secretaries,  62 

Seigneur,  8 iff.,  87 

Sei-shonagon,  152 

Sekigahara,  293,  309,  322 

Semi-independent  lords,  n 

Sen-no-Rikqu,  244 

Sentimentalism,  248 

Seppuku,  2875. 

Sesshu,  249 

Settsu,  province,  114,  147 

Seventeen  Articles,  109 

Shamisen,  162 

Shiba,  family,  268 

Shi-chi,  364 

Shikoku,  island,  33,  240 

Shimabara,  313 

Shimatsu,  family,  303 

Shimonoseki,  161,  23off.,  393 

Shinano,  province,  67,  305 

Shingon,  Buddhist  sect,  275 

Shinran,  priest,  189 

Shin-shu,  189,  35if.  See  Ikko- 
shu  and  Jodo-shinshu 

Shintoism,  39ff.,  63,  ii7ff., 
i45ff.,  i68ff.,  172,  181,  203, 
273,  359,  262f.,  363,  384 

Ship-building,  240 


Index 


409 


Shiragi,    59f.,    97,    no,    i2off., 

196 

Shirakawa,  Emperor,  178 
Shirakawa,    town    in    Mutsu, 

147,  192 
Shogun,      iSiff.,      197,      2Oiff., 

209ff.,   213,   2isff.,   247,   255, 

294<f.,    300,    305,    307ff.,   311, 

325*!.,  329,  331,  333,  346,  348, 

355,    36o,    368ff.,    syzf.,    378, 

389 
Shogunate,    n,    156,   272,    302, 

389,  390,  396 
Shomu,     Emperor,     132,     140, 

164,  336 
Shooting,  312 
Shop-keepers,  290 
Shosoin,  132 
Shotoku,     Crown    Prince,     55, 

1 02,  109 

Shoyen,  180.     See  Manors 
Shrines,  252.     See  Shintoism 
Shugo,   182,  210,  2i2ff.,  2i6ff., 

224,  296ff. 
Shu-king,  232 
Siberia,  370 
Silesia,  198 
Singers,  243 
Singing,  135 

Sinico-Japanese  War,   392ff. 
Sinico-rnania,  149,  366 
Slavery,  80 
Snider,  rifle,  387 
Social  progress,  16 
Soga,    family,    93,    xooff.,    112, 

140 

Soga-no-Umako,   55 
Soga-no-Yemishi,   55 
Solidarity,  national,  2Ooff. 
Southern  China,  ggff. 
Southern  Korea,  97 
Spaniards,  350 
Spy-system,  257 
Ssuma-Chien,  364 
Ssuma-Tateng,  100 
Still-life,  249 
Stories,  248 
Storms,  cyclonic,  24 


Story-tellers,  244 

Stuarts,  355 

Students  sent  to  China,  inff., 


Succession,  law  of,  92,  346ff. 
Sugawara,  family,   149 
Sugawara-no-Michizane,    150 
Sui,  dynasty  in  China,  106,  no 
Suicide,  287!?.,  314 
Suiko,  Empress,   55f.,   106,   108 
Sumpu,  Shidzuoka,  322 
Sung,    dynasty   in    China,    8ff., 

190,     195,    226ff.,    232,    263, 

322,  368 
Superstitions,     139,     272,     276, 

352,  366 
Suruga,  province,  91,  268,  322, 

377 

T 

Tai'ho,    era    and    Statutes    of, 

"7,  185,  335,  384 
Tai'kwa,   era   and   reforms  of, 

80,  114,  116,  118,  i23ff.,  128, 

220 
Taira,    family,     156*?.,     i63ff., 

i74ff.,  i8iff.,  1  8  8,  192,  309 
Takakura,  Emperor,   158 
Takamori,  Saigo,  386*?. 
Takanobu,  painter,   165,  246 
Takauji,  Ashikaga,  2o6ff.,  215 
Takayori,  Sasaki,  218 
Takeshi-uchi,  93 
Tang,   dynasty   in   China,  7ff., 

79,    117,    i2off.,    i28ff.,    136, 

137,  i49ff.,  196,  263,  322 
Tankei  sculptor,  164 
Tanners,  343 
Taoism,  273 
Tatami,  39,  132!?. 
Taxes,  116,  i25ff.,  142,  279 
Tea-ceremony,  244,  250 
Temmu,  Emperor,  53f. 
Temples,    Buddhist,     39,     142, 

181,  203,  252,  353 
Tempyo,   era,    164!?.,  360 
Tenchi,  Emperor,  inff., 

119,  131,  133 


4io 


Index 


Tendai,  Buddhist  sect,  189 
Terakoya,    elementary    school, 

176 
Territories,  252*1.,  2596?.,  291, 

2955.,  sooff.,  3056%  312,  316, 

337ff.,   34iff.,    345,   347,    358, 

372 

Teutonic  nobles,    198 
Teutonic    Order    of    Knights, 

275 

Teutons,  land-system  of,  79 
Text-book,  235 
Textiles,  116 
Theatre,  333 
Thirty  Years'  War,  350 
Three  Years,  War  of,  156 
Tiles,  131 

Toba,  village,  376f. 
Toba-sojo,    painter-priest,    166 
Todaiji,  Temple,  136 
Toi,  197 

Tokimune,  Hojo,  i98ff. 
Tokugawa,  family,  259^.,  267, 

282,  294,  296,  309,  337,  357, 

361,  375f«,  377 

Tokugawa,  age  of,  225,  285, 
288ff.,  294,  310,  312,  328, 
332,  340,  342,  353f.,  36 iff., 

379 

Tokugawa  Shogunate,  17,  187, 
282,  284*!.,  29off.,  296,  301, 
305ff.,  309ff.,  315,  317,  325ff., 
329,  332,  336ff.,  34i,  344ff-> 
352,  356,  358,  361,  363,  37off., 
380,  390,  392 

Tokyo,  282,  379 

Toleration,  religious,  352f.,  385 

Tombs,  28 

Toneri,  prince,  53f. 

Tonkin,  323 

Tosa,  school  of  painters,  247, 
249 

Totemism,  272 

Totomi,  province,  67,  268 

Towns,  provincial,  225 

Toyotomi,     family,     267,     285, 

293 
Tozama,  294,  296 


Travelling,  236,  342 

Tripitaka,   Buddhist,   320,   322 

Tsuba,  331 

Tsugaru,  strait  of,  120 

Tsunayoshi,  Tokugawa,  327 

Tsushima,  island  and  prov- 
ince, 121 

Types,  in  printing,  3i9ff., 
322ff.  See  Clay-types,  Me- 
tallic types,  and  Movable 
types 

Typhoon,  41 

U 

Ultra-conservatism,  384*?. 
Umako,    102,    109.     See   Soga- 

no-Umako 
Unification,  14!!.,  238,  260,  267, 

273ff.,  280,  308,  367 
Uniqueness  of  the  Japanese,  75 
United  States,  373 
Unkei,  sculptor,  164 
Usufruct  of  land,  141,  341 
Utagaki,  135 
Utai,  162 

Utilitarianism,  328ff. 
Uyeno,  in  Toyko,  377 
Uyesugi,  family,  321 


Vassalage,    80,    153,   212,   214, 

240,  294ff.,  302,  304,  389 
Versification,  234,  323,  360 
Village,  330 
Vulgarisation,  224,  248 

W 

Wakayama,  296 

Wani,  family,  93 

War,  194 

Warehouse,  333 

Warfare,  286ff. 

Warriors,  154,  203 ff.,  206,  215, 
227,  232,  254ff.,  289ff.,  306, 
3o8ff.,  3126%  316,  319,  327, 
334,  339,  345,  35*,  372 


Index 


411 


Weapons,  65 

Weavers,  Chinese,   100 

Weaving,  100,  243 

Wei,  dynasty  in  China,  59 

Wen-hsuan,  321 

West,    civilisation    of    the,    9, 

369 

Women,  337 

Wood-block  printing,  322ff. 
Wood-types,  320,   323 
Written  characters,  28 
Wu-ti,  Emperor  of  China,   57 

X 

Xavier,  Francis,   245,   264 


Yamaguchi,  223,  230,  233,  245 
Yamana,  family,  225 
Yamashiro,  province,  146 
Yamato,  province,  90,  95,  115, 

147,  240 

Yamato,  river,  239 
Yang-ti,    Emperor    of    China, 

no 
Yasumaro.     See   Oh-no-Yasu- 

maro 

Yasutoki,  Hojo,  i%$ff. 
Yechigo,  province,  67,  319 
Yedo,    187,    282,    294ff.,    300*1., 

306,    309*1.,    327,    ssoff.,    338, 

348,    373,    377,     378f.      See 

Tokyo 
Yemishi,    ii2ff.     See  Soga-no- 

Yemishi 
Yenomoto,  Admiral,  378 


Yenryakuji,  Temple  on  Mount 

Hiyei,  159,  173,  276 
Yeshin,  priest,   173*?. 
Yezo,  island  of,  370,  379.     See 

Hokkaido 
Yodo,  river,  147 
Yoichi,    Suminokura,    323,    325 
Yonezawa,  321 
Yoritomo,  Minamoto,  156,  160, 

i75ff.,      i79ff.,      iSiff.,      184, 

i86ff.,    192,   2oifL,   213,   215, 

226,  272,  309 

Yoriyoshi,   Minamoto,   156 
Yosai,  priest,  190,  250 
Yoshihisa,  Ashikaga,  2i7ff. 
Yoshihisa,  Tokugawa,  374ff. 
Yoshiiye,  Minamoto,   156,  177, 

309 

Yoshimasa,  Ashikaga,  2i6ff. 
Yoshimitsu,  Ashikaga,  229 
Yoshimoto,  Imagawa,  268 
Yoshimune,   Tokugawa,   349 
Yoshiteru,  Ashikaga,  269 
Yoshitsune,      Minamoto,      161, 

192 
Yuan,      Mongol      dynasty     in 

China,    8,   196,   197*?.,  226ff., 

263 

Yuryaku,  Emperor,  93,  134 
Yushima,  in  Tokyo,  327 


Zen,    Buddhist    sect,    190,    226, 

325,   332 

Zen  priests,  226,  235,  247,  251 
Zodiacal  signs,  107 


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